Religion Quotes

Quotations are selected from this pool (and other quotation pools)
in a pseudorandom way every hour
and inserted at the top and bottom of some of the major pages on this website.
Feel free to copy any of these quotes and paste them for whatever purpose you please,
including on your own website, blog, social media page or forum debate posts.

Voice of God

I once heard the voice of God. It said Vrrrrmmmmm. Unless it was just a lawn
mower.

~ Age 11

Religious Pretentions

Religion still wants to be at the forefront of our social consciousness, despite its inability to explain,
discover or innovate.

~ achromat666

Atheism ≠ Religion

If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!

~ Clark Adams(born:1969-07-23 died:2007-05-21 at age:37)

Definition of Radical Atheist

Yes, I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe
yourself as atheist some people will say, Don’t you mean
agnostic? I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe
that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of
evidence to suggest that there is one…etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just
to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal and that it’s an opinion I hold
seriously.

A Few Little Men

A man didn’t understand how televisions work and was convinced that there must be lots of little men
inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of
the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan
lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention,
nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now
understand how televisions work. But I expect there are just a few little men in there,
aren’t there?.

God’s Gotcha

[God] puts an apple tree in the middle of [the Garden of Eden] and says, do what you like guys, oh, but
don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting Gotcha. It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it… Because if
you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with
bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.

Religious Censorship

Religion has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or
whatever. What it means is Here is an idea or notion that you are not allowed to say anything
bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not. If somebody votes for a party
you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an
argument, but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down, you are free to have an
argument about it. But on the other hand, if somebody says I mustn’t move a light switch
on Saturday you say, I respect that.

Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party,
Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows — but to have an
opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe… no, that’s holy?… We are
used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much a furor Richard [Dawkins] creates
when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you are not allowed to say these things. Yet
when you look at it rationally there is not reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any
other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.

Not a Christian Nation

The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

~ John Adams(born:1735-10-30 died:1826-07-04 at age:90), second
president of the United States, in the Treaty of Tripoli (1797)

Cowardly Faith

Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, send me there;
Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from desire for Paradise, exclude me thence;
But if I worship Thee for Thine Own sake, hide not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.

~ Rabi’a al-Adawiyya(born:717 AD died:801 AD at age:84)

Motive For Murder

Turn the unbelievers’ night into a day, demolish their homelands, and turn their blood into rivers.

What is the motive for all this mayhem? He wants to kill all the unbelievers — people who
reject the fantastic claims of Islam as unfounded. Basically, he wants to kill people for being rational. That is
as idiotic as wanting to kill everyone who does not believe in Bigfoot. Why should he care? Is he that insecure in
his own belief he requires universal acceptance of it? He is behaving like a door-to-door Mormonism salesman who
decapitates his potential customers when they say they are not interested.

God Loves My Country

And God loves my country
More than He loves yours.
He is pounding you with thunder,
He is blowing down your doors.
And your kingdom will fall
When His soldiers come to call,
Because God loves my country
More than He loves yours.

And you know that it’s so,
He’s on my side.
And he’s ready to roll,
And he wants you to die.

And God loves my country,
I will clear a path for Him.
He is strengthening my shoulders
As I tear you limb from limb.
And the ceiling is falling
On your children as they sleep,
And the god who loves my country
Will not hear you when you weep.

And you know that it’s so,
He’s on my side.
And he’s ready to roll,
And he wants you to die.

And God loves my country,
I will hang you from His cross.
He delivers me to victory,
He’s handing you the loss.
And the nails in your arms
They are tearing through your flesh
And His sun is beating down on you
As you’re bleeding to death.

And you know that it’s so,
He’s on my side.
And he’s ready to roll,
And he wants you to die.

And you know that it’s so,
He’s on my side.
And he’s read to roll,
And He wants you to die.

And He wants you to die,
And He wants you to die,
And He wants you to die,
And He wants you to die.

Neutrality

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

~ Dante Alighieri(born:1265 died:1321-09-14 at age:56)

Afterlife

I don’t believe in an after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

~ Woody Allen(born:1935-12-01 age:81)

Attaining Immortality

I don’t want to gain immortality through my work; I want to gain immortality through not dying.

~ Woody Allen(born:1935-12-01 age:81)

Evidence for God

Believing would be easier if God would show himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in
my name.

~ Woody Allen(born:1935-12-01 age:81)

Living On

I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

~ Woody Allen(born:1935-12-01 age:81)

Loyal Opposition

To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.

~ Woody Allen(born:1935-12-01 age:81)

Sex and Death

So then, what do you believe in?Sex and death. Two things that come once in my lifetime. But at least after death you’re
not nauseous.

~ Woody Allen(born:1935-12-01 age:81)

The First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.

~ The First Amendment(born:1791-12-15 age:224)

This text is the source of whatever religious harmony America now enjoys. Traitors to their oath
to defend the constitution, like Eric Cantor, Republican congressman from Virginia, want to ignore the constitution
and prohibit Muslims from building mosques.

Jesus’s Name

Mary must have been a space cadet to give her Jewish son a Mexican name.

~ Ann American(born:1990-07-04 age:26)

Jesus’s Name

What a weird trip Mary lay on her son Jesus, giving him a swear word for a name.

~ Ann American(born:1990-07-04 age:26)

Definition of Deism

The definition of deism is the philosophical idea of God as a first cause of the
universe, who lays down the laws of nature and lets them run like clockwork, indifferent to the fate of the people
subject to them.

This is the religious view inspired by the Newtonian equations. In contrast deism is the belief in a deity who tinkers with the universe, like a boy with an ant farm.

Revolting Eternal Punishment

So revolting to my moral nature is the creed of eternal punishment that it, more than any other cause, produces
the most widespread unbelief. Compared with this, all objections to Christianity fade to insignificance.

~ Loren Anderson

Closeted Secularists

Never sacrifice who you are just because someone has a problem with it.

~ Seth Andrews(born:1968-04-12 age:48)

Abstinence-Only Education

If abstinence-only education failed the Virgin Mary, how do you expect it to work for your daughter?

~ Anonymous

Bible ≈ Software Licence

To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the
bottom and click I agree.

~ Anonymous

Christian Futility

Telling a pagan they are going to hell is like telling a Christian they are going to Mordor.

~ Anonymous

Contradiction

The first commandment contradicts the first amendment.

~ Anonymous

Death After Life

Do I believe in life after death? No I believe in death after life.

~ Anonymous

Definition of Faith

Faith does not give you the answers; it just stops you from asking questions.

~ Anonymous

Difficult Accommodation

Joseph and Mary should have known better they would not be able to find accommodation. After all, its always
busy near Christmas.

~ Anonymous

Doctrine of Hell

I see the doctrine of hell as being probably the major stumbling block to the return of a de-Christianized world
to Christ. The doctrine of eternal damnation, more than any other teaching of the church, produces atheism. If you
examine closely all the big name atheists — like Feuerback and Nietzsche — it is this teaching more
than any other that offended them and turned them away. Out of these famous atheists came all the movements that
have caused so much hell here and now. If God is to practice what He preaches, then it makes it hard to believe in
eternal damnation.

~ Anonymous

Failure of Reason

You cannot reason people out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into.

~ Anonymous

Followers of Jesus

Dear Jesus
Please save me from your followers.

~ Anonymous

Futility of Prayer

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

~ Anonymous

God and Oil

If Americans and Jews are God’s chosen people, why did He hide all their oil under Muslim
soil?

~ Anonymous

How You know Christianity is Batshit Crazy

The definition of Christianity is the belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you
symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil
force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a
magical tree.

~ Anonymous1890

How You know Christianity is Batshit Crazy II

The definition of liberal Christianity: All that Eve stuff is baloney, but I still have an imaginary friend who
magically manipulates the world for me and he also magically impregnated a woman, 2000
years ago and she bore him a son who underwent an ancient ritual of blood sacrifice in order to dispel a curse laid
upon me, thus ensuring I will be immortal.

~ Anonymous1890

Intelligence

The world contains two kinds of men: intelligent men without religion and religious men without
intelligence.

~ Anonymous

The Internet

The Internet is where religion goes to die.

~ Anonymous

Jesus the Hippy

A support group for people who believe God manifested on earth as a Jewish hippy some twenty centuries ago, then
killed himself on a cross in order to spare his own creation from his own wrath.

~ Anonymous

Can you imagine being a Catholic missionary trying to sell this nonsense to Amazonians?

Jesus the Jewish Zombie

Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you
symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil
force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a
magical tree.

~ Anonymous

Can you imagine being a Catholic missionary trying to sell this nonsense to Algonquins?

Let’s Make a Deal

Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.

~ Anonymous

Long Spoons in Heaven and Hell

A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, Lord, I would like to
know what Heaven and Hell are like. The Lord led the holy man to two doors. He opened one of the doors and
the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large
pot of stew which smelled delicious and made the holy man’s mouth water. The people sitting around the table
were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that were
strapped to their arms and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because
the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths. The holy man shuddered
at the sight of their misery and suffering. The Lord said, You have seen Hell.

They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one. There was the large
round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man’s mouth water. The people were equipped with
the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The holy man
said, I don’t understand.It is simple, said the Lord,
it requires but one skill. You see, they have learned to feed each other, while the greedy
think only of themselves. When Jesus died on the cross he was thinking of you!

~ Anonymous

You hear this story frequently. The evil Catholic priest in Boardwalk Empire even
quoted it. The core message is admirable, but the story makes me puke. It is so sanctimonious, so corny, so phony,
so contrived, so Christian.

Origin of Homosexuals

If god did not make homosexuals, there would be none.

~ Anonymous

Philosophy vs Religion

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered; religion is answers that may never be questioned.

~ Anonymous

Prayer for the USA

May the USA be taken down a peg so that learns to treat the people of other nations as equally important as
Americans.

~ Anonymous

Religion and Morals

You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong, then you lack
empathy, not religion.

~ Anonymous

Shampoo Theology

I subscribe to shampoo theology. When a god stops working I try another one.

~ Anonymous

Sheeple

Only sheep need a shepherd.

~ Anonymous

Steve

God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?… hmmmm…then who made
Steve?

~ Anonymous

Thinking About God

For some reason, whenever people think about God they get a pained expression as if someone had poked a broom up
their ass.

~ Anonymous

Putting Words in God’s Mouth

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with
their own desires.

~ Susan B. Anthony(born:1820-02-15 died:1906-03-13 at age:86)

Debunking God

Either there is a god (or gods), or there is not. If there is, then we should reasonably expect to find
empirical evidence in favour of his existence. To date, however, all forms of evidence have been lacking and the
assumption of God does nothing to quantifiably model a large body of observations or reliably predict future
events. The God hypothesis therefore adds nothing to our understanding of nature and may as well be equivalent to
no God at all. Unless this situation ever changes, the only rational conclusion is to assume that God does not
exist.

~ AnticitizenX

No Argument for Gods

Faking Religiosity

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal
treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move
against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

~ Aristotle(born:384 BC died:322 BC at age:62)

The Most Potent Force for Atheism

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

The Most Unthinking People

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings
of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most
uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders
of us all… I personally resent it bitterly.

Baby Religion = Cult

Clinging

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

~ Wystan Hugh Auden(born:1907-02-21 died:1973-09-29 at age:66)

Unconditional Law of Love

You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

~ Wystan Hugh Auden(born:1907-02-21 died:1973-09-29 at age:66)

Universal Domination

The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because
they’ve realised they can’t get away with it.

~ Wystan Hugh Auden(born:1907-02-21 died:1973-09-29 at age:66)

The Most Important Wealth

The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.

~ Marcus Aurelius(born:121-04-26 AD died:180-03-17 AD at age:58)

Why You Can Ignore the Gods

Live a good life. If there are gods & they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but
will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to
worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in
the memories of your loved ones.

~ Marcus Aurelius(born:121-04-26 AD died:180-03-17 AD at age:58)

Discover, not Imagine How Nature Works

For first of all we must prepare a Natural and Experimental History, sufficient and good; and this
is the foundation of all; for we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to
do.

~ Francis Bacon(born:1561-01-22 died:1626-04-09 at age:65)

How Dumb Are They?

They [Christian rednecks] were so stupid that they couldn’t pour piss out of a boot even if the
instructions were printed on the bottom.

Killing Faggots

i hate these faggots they should be killed.

~ Mussa Bagha

This is irrational. What other people do in their bedrooms does not affect you at all. It is none
of your business any more that what positions heterosexual couples use and whether they enjoy oral or anal sex. Why
not direct that anger at someone who does harm you, like polluters, rapists, thieves or drive by
shooters?

In the Spirit Of Tolerance, Really?

In the spirit of tolerance, you should allow us to execute homosexuals.

~ David Bahati(born:1973-08-06 age:43)
Ugandan politician promoting a kill the gays bill designed by the C-street American lobby group. He also proposes a
three year prison sentence for just knowing a gay person. He believes that gays and pedophiles are one in the same.
He considers execution a beautiful loving punishment.

Definition of Faith

Though I applaud doing good deeds for their own sake, religious faith has nothing to do with it.
Religious people are passive. They leave action up to god, and accept the world as it is, believing that god must,
for some inscrutable reason, want it that way.

The Green Curtain

This is an allegory about religion. The wizard hides behind a green curtain, creating thunderclaps
with his sound effects, trying to terrify the people. He tries to get Dorothy not to notice that he is just an
ordinary human faking being the great Oz.

Blind Faith

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see

~ The BeatlesStrawberry Fields Forever

Simulacrum

simulacrum: something that is only an image of something either real or imagined but that is
interacted withas if it really were what in represents.

~ Jean Beaudriard(born:1929-07-27 age:87)

Consider than god may be a simulacrum.

The Holy Trinity

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.

~ William BeckThe Murder Room by P.D. James

Time For Prayer

Remo Williams: Jesus! Chiun: Concentrate. This is no time for
prayer.

~ Remo Williams, the Adventure Begins

Definition of Delusion

A delusion is a belief that:

is held even when there is no evidence to support it.

is held on the basis of an assertion, not an axiom.

~ Professor Mike Begon(born:1951 age:65)

By this definition, Christians freely admit their god is a delusion,
since they proudly proclaim that they believe purely on the basis of faith, not evidence and it is clear not
everyone shares their basic assumptions are self-evident as an axiom demands.

Foolish Asceticism

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one
tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently and in a day’s time they will have turned
it into a hell.

~ Jeremy Bentham(born:1748-02-05 died:1832-06-06 at age:84)

This is what religion does, forcing its misery and joylessness on others. Sometimes it is silly as
when John Ashcroft spent $15,000 of taxpayer money for two gowns for statues, or when Mali rebels denied all music
or really nasty — ripping out the clitorises of little girls without anaesthetic or any attempt at
sanitation.

Pedophile Priests

10% of priests are pedophiles. The other 90% just like to
watch and help with the coverup.

That describes the USA to a tee. It is insanely conceited. It consumes the lion’s share of
the earth’s resources and invades other countries to steal even more. It has exported its jobs so it no
longer produces anything. It is the stingiest developed country on the planet in terms of per capita foreign aid
and treats its own poor with utter contempt.

Learn From The Animals

But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee:
Or speak to the earth and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.

Biblical Poetry

The End

And the nations were angry and thy wrath is come and the time of the dead, that they should be judged and that
thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets and to the saints and them that fear thy name, small and
great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.

~ Revelation 11:18
warning the Robertsons that God will destroy them for destroying the earth.

Why You Can’t Enter Heaven

And they sung as it were a new song before the throne and before the four
beasts and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were
redeemed from the earth.

These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb
whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

Freedom to Worship Jesus

The constitution gives you the right to worship Jesus in any way you please.

~ Sothin Biegot

Definition of Ocean

Ocean: A body of water occupying 2/3 of a world made for man… who has no
gills.

~ Ambrose Bierce(born:1842-06-24 died:1914 at age:72)

Definition of Pray

Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly
unworthy.

~ Ambrose Bierce(born:1842-06-24 died:1914 at age:72)

Why Persecute Gays?

It is good to persecute gays because gay people are not smarter than Jesus Christ.

~ A Russian religious bigot

Had he checked with his bible, he would have discovered that Jesus had nothing negative to say
about gays. It was St. Paul, Leviticus and Deuteronomy who condemned people to be stoned to death for manner of
even the tiniest religious superstition transgressions, such as eating shrimp or raking leaves on Sunday, or going
to a non-Christian church.

Overdoing Religious Freedom

Government shall not burden a person’s or religious organization’s freedom of religion; protect the
right to act or refuse to act on religious grounds; specify that government shall prove by clear and convincing
evidence prove a compelling governmental interest in establishing a burden on the freedom of religion; specify what
constitutes a burden. A burden shall include indirect burdens such as withholding
benefits, assessing penalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities.

~ Kentucky Religious Freedom Bill(born:2013-03-28 age:3)

This is an ill-conceived bill that muddies more than it clarifies. For example:

May someone with a yard overrun with rats now claim they belong to the Hindu cult that worships rats?

May someone caught with marijuana or peyote now claim they belong to cults for whom they are sacraments?

May someone refuse to wear a hard hat or a motorcycle helmet now claiming it interferes with religious
headdress?

May known Sikh terrorists now be permitted to carry daggers on aircraft because they consider them a
religious symbol?

May Christians now legally crucify gay people the way Matthew Shepard was because their bible commands
it?

May a Jehovah’s Witness parents now withhold medical treatment from a 16-year-old child who wants it
because of the religious belief that blood transfusions are wicked.

The government may not have compelling interest to interfere, but they are still other valid
reasons.

Right to Build a Church

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a
basic question — should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on
private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow
it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between
religions, or favor one over another.

~ Michael Bloomberg(born:1942-02-14 age:74)
mayor of New York City. 2010-08-03

Bloomberg’s speech on
religious tolerance for Muslims wanting to build a mosque in New York City is a classic. It is all the more amazing
knowing Bloomberg is a Republican, a group not known for religious tolerance.

Huh? Atheists are happy to admit ignorance. It is the Christians who make a virtue out of
pretending to know things they cannot possibly know.

Definition of Faith

Faith: Pretending to know things you don’t know.

~ Dr. Peter Bogghossian
Portland State University

The Evil of Faith

You often speak out against faith, calling it a delusion and a cognitive sickness. How
come?Because enough is enough. A lot of people are sick and tired of being held hostage to the
delusions of others and I’m one of those people. I think that people are hungry for a frank, honest
discussion about things — particularly about faith. To profess things you don’t know for certain and
then claim the reason for your justification is faith? That doesn’t contribute to the conversation.
That’s the end of the conversation.

~ Dr. Peter Bogghossian
Portland State University

The Evil of Faith-Based Reasoning

Do you see faith-based reasoning as a larger problem? Bigger than just whether someone is a
good person or not?Oh absolutely. It affects our public policy today. You see it with the treatment of homosexual
individuals. This is real. These are real people. These are people who are being denied civil rights on the basis
of a book that was written in the freakin’ iron age. The creator of the world actually cares about where
people put their penises? Just think about that from an objective point of view: We go to some planet and we see
these green blobs. And half the green blobs have a celery stalk and the other half don’t . Some of these
green blobs start sticking their celery stalks in some other holes and everybody’s up in arms. The creator of
the universe doesn’t want the celery stalk in this hole. How do you respond to that? That is outside the
bounds of reason. The only thing you can say is go to the children’s table. Those
are the sorts of things that come up when we as a society don’t value critical rationality.

~ Dr. Peter Bogghossian
Portland State University

Pretending to Know

When one has a crisis of faith it means one is struck by the realisation than one has been pretending know
things that one doesn’t know.

~ Dr. Peter Bogghossian
Portland State University

Religion Can be Cured

Help cure the world of the faith virus.

~ Dr. Peter Bogghossian
Portland State University

Excuse for Pretending to Know

Christians assert that because there is fundamental weirdness at the quantum level of the
very very
small one must pretend to know things one does not know, aka have faith.

~ Dr. Peter Boghossian
Portland State University

Faith is the Problem

Faith is the problem. Faith is unreliable way to think about problems that will not lead to the
truth.

~ Dr. Peter Boghossian
Portland State University

Faith Virus

Just as I am not upset with somebody who has caught a cold, so too I am not upset with somebody who’s
caught the faith virus.

The Meaning of Life is Pretending to Know

Christians claim that life has no meaning if you stop pretending to know things you don’t know, though
they phrase it more tersely as life has no meaning without faith.

~ Dr. Peter Boghossian
Portland State University

Private Facts

In post modern culture, people not only have their own views, they think they are entitled to their own
facts.

~ Dr. Peter Boghossian

Tenacious Beliefs

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses it is an idea that possesses the mind.

~ Robert Oxton Bolt(born:1924-08-15 died:1995-02-21 at age:70)

Fanatical Resistance

There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter.

~
Napoléon
Bonaparte(born:1769-08-15 died:1821-05-05 at age:51)

The Purpose of Religion

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

~
Napoléon
Bonaparte(born:1769-08-15 died:1821-05-05 at age:51)

Worldly Priests

I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world and yet they lay their
hands on everything they can get.

~ Napoléon
Bonaparte(born:1769-08-15 died:1821-05-05 at age:51)

Especially children.

Biblical Definition of Marriage

If you can’t sell your daughter for four cows and a goat you have already changed the definition of
marriage.

~ Cecil Bothwell

David Bowie on God

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent
behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely
empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

~ David Bowie(born:1947-01-08 died:2016-01-10 at age:69)

Holding Only One Idea

The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new
ideas.

Killer Chaplains

I heard Brown on NPR (National Public Radio) This American Life explaining that
his job essentially was convincing soldiers reluctant to kill that God approved and wanted the soldier to kill
people and win the war. You can listen to the interview as he confesses his revolting crimes twisting the bible to
justify murder on the grounds Jesus healed the daughter of a soldier, implying Jesus must thus have approved of
what the soldier did. That is so sick. Even doctors treat war criminals, which does not in the least imply
approval. I could imagine a Nazi chaplain giving this exact same pep talk to encourage a soldier to fight in a
similar illegal aggressive war. This chaplain is more immoral than the sleasiest lawyer. In traditional Christian
theology, it is the devil’s work to trick someone into committing a mortal sin. What motivates this piece of
shit? It can’t be defending the USA. He knows full well the USA attacked Afghanistan and Iraq not the reverse
and neither country has the means to mount an attack. Perhaps a vicarious thrill thinking about the killing and
child suffering he cheerleads? He can’t claim ignorance. He admits he thoroughly thought over the morality of
what he was doing and decided for evil.

Arrogant Atheism

Atheism, the arrogant belief that the universe — wasn’t created for us.

~ Bruce2008-07-07 Quoted by Michael Nugent in his address Arrogant atheists and not
collecting stamps at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin.

Execution Symbol

If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little
electric chairs round their necks instead of crosses.

~ Lenny Bruce(born:1925-10-13 died:1966-08-03 at age:40)

The Sun is a Star

The stars in the sky are really other suns like our own, around which orbit other planets. (paraphrase)

~ Giordano Bruno(born:1548 died:1600-02-17 at age:51)

For this discovery, the church imprisoned him for age years then burned
him at the stake. What is the matter with modern Christians that they refuse to acknowledge they are just as
aggressively ignorant today in rejecting objective scientific evidence?

Negative Effect of Religion

I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.

~ James Buchanan, Jr.(born:1791-04-23 died:1868-06-01 at age:77)
15th president of the USA

Buddhist Humility

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of
respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the
good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to and take it as your
guide.

~ Gautama Buddha(born:563 BC died:483 BC at age:80)

Transience

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

~ Gautama Buddha(born:563 BC died:483 BC at age:80)

The literal truth of these words sink in with a vengeance when you hit retirement age.

Definition of Faith

Faith is believing in stuff that nobody in their right mind would believe.

Definition of God

God is all that is. Since everything that exists is God, in one form or another, the only way that God can make
a tree is by becoming the tree. Likewise, the way God made you was by becoming you.

~ Tolly Burkan(born:1948-05-17 age:68)

Listen As If For the First Time

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

~ Edmund Burke(born:1729-01-12 died:1797-07-09 at age:68)

Scoundrels invented religion to lull people into apathy, leaving it up to a god to oppose the
evildoers, who, of course, does nothing at all.

Belief

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

~ Samuel Butler(born:1835-12-04 died:1902-06-18 at age:66)

Christ and Church Divorce

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he
would probably get one.

~ Samuel Butler(born:1835-12-04 died:1902-06-18 at age:66)

Christ the Crucifier

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been
crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

~ Samuel Butler(born:1835-12-04 died:1902-06-18 at age:66)

Highest Present Development

Man is God’s highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

~ Samuel Butler(born:1835-12-04 died:1902-06-18 at age:66)

The Last Witch

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

~ Samuel Butler(born:1835-12-04 died:1902-06-18 at age:66)

Odious Followers

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people
whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

~ Samuel Butler(born:1835-12-04 died:1902-06-18 at age:66)

Virtue of Intoxication

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.

~ Samuel Butler(born:1835-12-04 died:1902-06-18 at age:66)

Slavery of Religion

As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.

~ Thelma Butterfly McQueen(born:1911-01-08 died:1995-12-22 at age:84)

Christians Burning Christians

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded. That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

~ Lord George Gordon Byron(born:1788-01-22 died:1824-04-19 at age:36)

Miserable Enough

I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this
life without speculating upon another.

~ Lord George Gordon Byron(born:1788-01-22 died:1824-04-19 at age:36)

Saintly Magic

If you pray to St. Bartholomew of Cleves, the patron saint of fools and write three letters about it, one to
your mother, one to your best friend and one to a high school teacher, your shampoo bottle will always have one
more serving in it, even if you don’t buy any more. This also works for mayonnaise.

~ Bambi C.

Focusing on the Imaginary

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

~ Julius Gaius Caesar(born:100-07-13 BC died:44-03-15 BC at age:55)

Source of Belief

Men freely believe that which they desire.

~ Julius Gaius Caesar(born:100-07-13 BC died:44-03-15 BC at age:55)

Eternal Life as an Imbecile

We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time.
Surely you’re not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!
It’s there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees — knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of
knowledge and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life and you remain a child in the garden forever,
undying.

Could it be the Christians got their metaphor right? Our too-rapidly-evolved intelligence is all
but certain to result in our early extinction. Was Christianity a flat-footed attempt to dumb down humanity?

So Far, So Good

Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia.
But it keeps not ending.
So far, so good.

Abolish Religions

I advocate the abolition of all religions, without setting up anything new of the kind.

~ Richard Carlile(born:1790-12-08 died:1843-02-10 at age:52)

For saying this, he and his supporters were jailed for a total of hundreds of years.

Carlin on Religion

When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of
false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest
bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible
man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special
list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full
of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke
and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect,
all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay
no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

Incompetent God

Results like these [state of the earth] do not belong on the resumé of a supreme being.

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

Religion = Mind Control

Religion is just mind control.

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

Religious Authority

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

The Religious Crazy Con

Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches
everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not
want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning
and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever
and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you!

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

Religious Politics

If churches want to play the game of politics, let them pay admission like everyone else.

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

Separation of Church and State

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions
screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

Sick Logo

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

Sun Worship

I’ve begun worshiping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could
mention, I can see the Sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all
the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to
dress up and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to
the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50%
rate.

~ George Carlin(born:1937-05-12 died:2008-06-22 at age:71)

God Made the Universe Just for Us

99.99999% of the universe is a lethal radiation-filled vacuum. That means god must
really like radiation-filled vacuums.

~ Dr. Richard Carrier(born:1969-12-01 age:47)

God Made the Universe Just for Us, Seriously?

99.99999% of the universe is a lethal radiation-filled vacuum.
99.99999% of all the material in the universe composes stars and black holes on which
nothing can live.
99.99999% of all the other material in the universe (space dust, asteroids, planets,
moons) is barren of life or is inhospitable to life.

~ Dr. Richard Carrier(born:1969-12-01 age:47)

And Christians have the gall to claim their god designed every molecule of this universe purely
for the convenience of his darling, man. If it were so designed, then most of it would be habitable, not just a
microscopic sliver.

The Outsider Test For Faith

You must test your own religious claims and texts by the same standards you apply to other religions.

If your religion’s claims and texts fair no better, then your religion is just as false as theirs
is.

~ Dr. Richard Carrier(born:1969-12-01 age:47)

Death is Final

Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face
one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and
there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die.
If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are
holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?

~ Physicist Sean M. Carroll(born:1966-10-05 age:50)

Faults Means Universe is Not Divine

The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that
mar it.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus(born:94 BC died:55 BC at age:39)

Fear Creates Gods

Fear is the mother of all gods. Nature does all things without their meddling.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus(born:94 BC died:55 BC at age:39)

Fear ⊃ Gods

Fear is the mother of all gods.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus(born:94 BC died:55 BC at age:39)

On Automatic

Nature free at once of her haughty lords is seen to do all the things spontaneously of herself without the
meddling of the gods.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus(born:94 BC died:55 BC at age:39)

Religion ⇒ Evil

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
Only religion can lead to such evil.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus(born:94 BC died:55 BC at age:39)

Uses of Religion

All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician and ridiculous to the
philosopher.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus(born:94 BC died:55 BC at age:39)

Common Sense Atheism

Outrage To Common Sense

All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of
a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man’s reason, that any strong
and vigorous intelligence laughs at them.

Danger of Only One Idea

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you have.

~ Emilé-Auguste Chartier(born:1868-03-03 died:1951-06-02 at age:83)

Genocidal Bible

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.

~ Noam Chomsky(born:1928-12-07 age:88)

Genocidal Bible

You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I
mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible — not only
did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide — I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last
man, woman, child and, you know, donkey and so on because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were
trying to cross the desert — not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was
ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That’s the story of Noah.
I mean, that’s beyond genocide — you don’t know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended
Him and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each
species to stay alive — that’s supposed to be gentle and wonderful.

~ Noam Chomsky(born:1928-12-07 age:88)

Irrationality

Irrationality is the ability to have two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time and to believe both
of them. That’s the peak of irrationality.

~ Noam Chomsky(born:1928-12-07 age:88)

One common example is a Christian who believes the bible is inerrant, but is uses modern science
in preference to bible science.

Holy Vision

When I was praying in depth with my prayer group, Jesus told me that you [Richard Dawkins] are
the devil. I saw him with my own eyes.

~ A Christian

I think you mean you hallucinated a man with a beard and long hair. Jesus came from Palestine, so
we don’t know exactly how he looked, but he likely looked like a modern Palestinian, not the Nordic Jesus
popular on postcards. So that man you saw is clearly not Jesus just how you falsely imagine
Jesus.

Definition of Religion

Religion is a belief in supernatural entities or forces that have an effect on the natural world — A
belief in forces that are invisible, intangible, inaudible and otherwise undetectable by any natural means.

~ Greta Christina(born:1961-12-31 age:54)

Definition of Fanatic

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

~ Winston Churchill(born:1874-11-30 died:1965-01-24 at age:90)

Private vs Public Beliefs

On the subject of the nature of the gods, the first question is Do the gods exist or do the
not? It is difficult you may say to deny that they exist. I would agree if we were arguing the matter in a
public assembly, but in a private discussion of this kind, it is perfectly easy to do so.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero(born:106-01-03 BC died:43-12-07 BC at age:63)

American Theocracy

The American theocracy owns 10,000 nuclear weapons.

~ CircusOfBedlam

The USA is a theocracy in the sense most voters will only vote for a fellow Christian.

Hijacking of Morality

The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

~ Arthur C. Clarke(born:1917-12-16 died:2008-03-19 at age:90)

Insane Religions

Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it
more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

~ Arthur C. Clarke(born:1917-12-16 died:2008-03-19 at age:90)

Legislating Creeds

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the
political power to do so.

~ Arthur C. Clarke(born:1917-12-16 died:2008-03-19 at age:90)

Selective Literalists

In reality, there are no biblical literalists, only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining
women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It’s time we did the same for
homophobia.

Same God, Different Message

It seems to me that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all have the same god and he’s telling them all
different things.

~ Billy Connolly(born:1942-11-24 age:74)

Wee Parking Angel

I don’t believe in angels, no… But I do have a wee parking angel. It’s on my dashboard and
you wind it up. The wings flap and it’s supposed to give you a parking space. It’s worked so far.

~ Billy Connolly(born:1942-11-24 age:74)

Men Are Evil Enough On Their Own

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every
wickedness.

~ Joseph Conrad(born:1857-12-03 died:1924-08-03 at age:66)

Ignorance ⇏ God

Just because your’re not smart enough to know what the fuck they’re [physicists] are talking about
doesn’t mean god exists.

~ Dr. Brian Cox(born:1968-03-03 age:48)

Opinion Rights

The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion
and have others listen to it.

The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that
opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!

~ Dr. Brian Cox(born:1968-03-03 age:48)

Religious Fables

The simple fables of the religious of the world have come to seem like tales told to children.

~ Dr. Francis Crick(born:1916-06-08 died:2004-07-28 at age:88)

Imposing State Religion

I believe this notion of separation of church and state was the figment of some infidel’s
imagination.

Recycling

Nothing really dies, I told him. It just turns into something
else. Everything is always changing form. Do you remember the pumpkin that rotted into the earth in your garden?
Tomatoes sprouted where it used to be. This bird will go back to the earth and turn into lavender flowers and
butterflies.

~ Anne Cushman

Nothing But Opinions

Ideas about god and what he may want are nothing but opinion and conjecture.

~ Brian Dalton(born:1965-05-31 age:51)

The Majority Think you are Wrong

No matter what you believe about god, the majority of the people on earth are absolutely sure you are
wrong.

~ DarkMatter2525

God = Mother Goose

I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.

~ Clarence Darrow(born:1857-04-18 died:1938-03-13 at age:80)

Jehovah is a Devil

I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were
such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.

~ Clarence Darrow(born:1857-04-18 died:1938-03-13 at age:80)

Christianity is a Barbaric Religion

I had gradually come, by this time [1839-01], to see that the Old Testament from its
manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc. and from its
attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the
Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.

~ Charles Darwin(born:1809-02-12 died:1882-04-19 at age:73)

Cruel Creator

With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no
intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do and as I should wish to do,
evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot
persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ
[parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a
cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly
designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe and especially the nature
of man and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as
resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call
chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the
human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.
Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical.

~ Charles Darwin(born:1809-02-12 died:1882-04-19 at age:73)

Darwin was not a brave man. He was terrified of Christians and suffered physically from that fear.
He sucked up to them even as he wrote his books that, as a side effect, demolished their bullshit.

Improbable Christianity

By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles
by which Christianity is supported, — and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more
incredible the miracle become; — that the men at the time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost
incomprehensible by us, — that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the
events, — that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted
as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses, — by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the
least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine
revelation.

~ Charles Darwin(born:1809-02-12 died:1882-04-19 at age:73)

The evidence for Christianity is very weak, nowhere near the quality that would be needed in a
court of law to even convict a pickpocket, much less to substantiate so grandiose a claim.

Improbable Christianity

The more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, — that the men at
that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, — that the Gospels cannot be
proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, — that they differ in many important details, far
too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; — by such
reflections as these… I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.

~ Charles Darwin(born:1809-02-12 died:1882-04-19 at age:73)

When Darwin started his journey on the Beagle, he had been studying for the clergy and had no
doubts about the absolute truth of every line of the bible. It was having a deep look at nature that shattered his
belief.

Indoctrinated Children

Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children
producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as
difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred
of a snake.

~ Charles Darwin(born:1809-02-12 died:1882-04-19 at age:73)

Only Sadists Wish Christianity to be True

I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the
text seems to show that the men who do not believe and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best
friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

~ Charles Darwin(born:1809-02-12 died:1882-04-19 at age:73)

The Almah Confusion

The point is well known to biblical scholars and not disputed by them. The Hebrew word in Isaiah is almah, which
undisputedly means young woman, with no implication of virginity. If virgin had been
intended, bethulah could have been used instead (the ambiguous English word maiden
illustrates how easy it can be to slide between the two meanings). The translation occurred with the pre-Christian
Greek translation known as the Septuagint rendered almah into
παρθενος (parthenos), which really does mean virgin. Matthew (not of
course the apostle and contemporary of Jesus, but the gospel-maker writing long afterwards), quoted Isaiah in what
seems to be a derivative of the Septuagint version (all but two of the fifteen Greek words are identical) when he
said Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name
Emmanuel (Authorised English translation). It is widely accepted among Christian scholars that the story of
the virgin birth of Jesus was a late interpolation, put in presumably by Greek-speaking disciples in order that the
(mistranslated) prophesy should be seen to be fulfilled. Modern versions of the New English Bible
correctly give young woman in Isaiah. They equally correctly leave virgin in Matthew, since they are translating from his Greek.

Matthew, the writer of the allegedly inerrant bible, is caught red-handed lying to make his tale
sound more impressive. How can anyone possibly trust that this man did not tell other serious lies is the rest of
his account?

Atheism is Not a Religion

The Bible Itself is an Immoral Book

People who do not know the Bible well have been gulled into thinking it is a good guide to morality. This
mistaken view may have motivated the millionaire Conservative party donors. I have even
heard the cynically misanthropic opinion that, without the Bible as a moral compass, people would have no restraint
against murder, theft and mayhem. The surest way to disabuse yourself of this pernicious falsehood is to read the
Bible itself.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)Why I want all our children to read the King James Bible2012-05-19source,
2005-04-25, Salon

Biblical Date Oopsie

Luke [the gospel writer] screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of
independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius — a local census, not one decreed
by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole — but it happened too late in 6 AD,
long after Herod’s death.

In other words Luke’s story is historically impossible and internally inconsistent. He lied
to fudge the fulfillment of Micah’s prophesy and to provide a villain to play off Jesus in his fictitious
drama.

Birthplace determines Religion

If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and
grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far
the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so
passionately believe would have been a completely different and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only
you had happened to be born in a different place.

Birthplace of Jesus

A good example of the colouring of religious agendas is the whole heart-warming legend of Jesus’ birth in
Bethlehem, followed by Herod’s massacre of the innocents. When the gospels were written many years after
Jesus’ death, nobody knew where he was born. But an Old Testament prophesy ( Micah 5:2
) had led Jews to expect that the long-awaited Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. In the light of this prophesy,
John’s gospel specifically remarks that his followers were surprised that he was not born in
Bethlehem; Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee?
Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh out of the seed of David and out of the town of Bethlehem, where
David was?

Matthew and Luke handle the problem differently, by deciding that Jesus must have been
born in Bethlehem after all. But they get him there by different routes.

Blasphemy Law

It is an absurd law [Section 295A of the Indian
penal code] but also extremely dangerous because it gives fanatics, whether they are Hindus, Catholics or
Muslims, a licence to be offended. It also allows people who are in dispute with you to make up false accusations
of blasphemy.

Blinding Trusting Parents

From a biological point of view, there are lots of different theories about why we have this extraordinary
predisposition to believe in supernatural things. One suggestion is that the child mind is, for very good Darwinian
reasons, susceptible to infection the same way a computer is. In order to be useful, a computer has to be
programmable, to obey whatever it’s told to do. That automatically makes it vulnerable to computer viruses,
which are programs that say, Spread me, copy me, pass me on. Once a viral program gets
started, there is nothing to stop it.

Similarly, the child brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other
adults tell it. In general, it’s a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to
do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste
of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child
brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a
charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected.

The Cure

Definition of Religion

Religion is a mind virus.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

Children believe what their parents tell them. Unfortunately, they are not clever enough to tell
the useful apart from garbage information like religion. So they pass it on and pass it on, generation after
generation. It is parasitic information.

Delusion + Belief Without Evidence = Trouble

A delusion that encourages belief where there is no evidence is asking for trouble. Disagreements between
incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those
trained in religion from the cradle. Instead, disagreements are settled by other means which, in extreme cases,
inevitably become violent. Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They
argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and
literary critics.

Disrespect Opinions

There is an attitude in the culture that says that everybody is entitled to their opinion. You got to respect
their opinion. No, you damn well haven’t got to respect their opinion.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

You don’t have a right to kill or beat someone up just because espouse a silly opinion. On
the other hand, you don’t have to pretend somebody’s foolish, baseless opinion is equal to those of
informed people. Opinions are not created equal.

Explaining God

It is not helpful to postulate a creator because the creator is the very kind of thing that needs an explanation
and although it is difficult enough to explain how a very simple origin of the universe came into being, how matter
and energy, how one or two physical constants came into existence. Although it is difficult enough to explain how
simplicity came into existence, it is a hell of a lot harder to think how something as complicated as a god comes
into existence, difficult enough to think of how a deist god comes into existence and even more difficult to think
how a Christian god who actually cares about things like sin, who gets himself born of a virgin.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

The notion of any god is highly improbable, but when you add all the silly tales
from the bible and the thousands of biblical claims that fly in the face of observed reality, the whole notion of
Jehovah becomes totally absurd. Even Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox is more plausible.

Faith Leads To Radicalisation

It is easy to blame radicalisation [for terrorism], but radicalisation is easy if people are brought up in the
first place to believe that faith is a virtue. If you bring up children and tell them that believing without
evidence, which is what faith is, is a virtue, then only a tiny minority of them may became radicalised but the
ground has been fertilised for radicalisation. It’s easy radicalise if people have been pre-adapted, have
been prepared with the view that faith is a virtue that what your religion teaches you is absolutely right. In a
way, no wonder they are so easily radicalised because they are told from babyhood onwards, that their religion is
the all-important thing and that’s what they have to believe, even if there is no evidence.

The Great Cop-out

I Don’t Believe You

When I meet somebody who claims to be religious, my first impulse is I don’t believe you. I don’t
believe you. I don’t believe you until you tell me, do you really believe, for example, if
they say they are Catholics, do you believe that when a priest blesses a wafer it turns into the body of Christ?
Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine
turns into blood? Mock them! Ridicule them! [pause] In public! don’t fall for the convention that we’re
all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is
not off-limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated
and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.

Jehovah is No Moral Role Model

Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is
actually written in it? … What makes my jaw drop is that people should base their lives on such as appalling
model as Yahweh, and even worse that they should bossily try to force that evil monster, whether fact or fiction,
on the rest of us.

Jehovah Stinks

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, proud of it; a
petty, unjust, unforgiving, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

If any of this surprises you, it is because you have yet to read the bible cover to cover. Dawkins
is not giving his personal opinion of Jehovah, as most Christians presume. He is merely reporting
what the bible has to say about him. Most Christians are exposed only to a few cherry-picked verses that put
Jehovah in a much better light. Christians assert Jehovah wrote the bible himself. It is thus astounding that he
would paint himself in such a bad light. It seems the ancient believers were proud Jehovah was such a bad-ass.
After all, he started out life as a war god.

Keeping People In Line Through Bogus Threats

The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line.
The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)Sex Death and the Meaning of Life

Lacking Mental Immunity

With so many mind-bytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child
brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists
and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off
without effort.

Marxist Children

Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a Marxist child or an Anarchist child or a
Post-modernist child. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to
encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions and our adverts
will help to do that.

Open Mindedness

The Penis Analogy

Religion is like a penis. It is a fine thing so long as you keep it do yourself, don’t wave it about and
don’t thrust it down our children’s throats.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

Poverty and Religion are Correlated

It has been convincingly demonstrated that countries where there are high rates of poverty, or high rates of
economic inequality, are the countries with the highest rates of religious beliefs.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

This is also true within the USA. The economically devastated states have the highest incidence of
religion. Why would this be so? Believing in faulty science, superstition and things that are untrue make you do
stupid things that harm your well being. Looking at is from the other end, poverty implies no education, no travel,
no literacy, so people are susceptible to superstition and con men. Highly stratified societies create myths to
justify injustice and those at the top of the caste system are the priests who sell the con to those at the bottom.
What else could account for the correlation? that the deities punish those who believe in gods? or that people are
believing in the wrong gods?

Poverty ⇒ Religion

It has been convincingly demonstrated that in countries with high rates of poverty, and high rates of economic
inequality are the countries with the highest rates of religious belief.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

That just shows correlation. Is it that economic desperation drives people to the last resort of
religion, or is it that religion makes people waste time with prayer and other ineffective measures of improving
ones’s lot rather than taking effective measures to increase wealth?

Religion is Not the Root of All Evil

Religion: a Evolutionary Dead End

Religion is nothing more than a useless and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. Religious behavior may
be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is,
or once was, useful.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

Religions Make False Scientific Claims

Religions do make claims about the universe — the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except
they’re usually false.

Teaching About Religion

I think there in a great deal to be said for religious education in the sense of teaching about
religion and biblical literacy. Both those things, by the way, I suspect will prepare a child to give up religion.
If you are taught comparative religion, you are more likely to realise that there are other religions than the one
you have been brought up in. And if you are if you are taught to read the bible, I can think of almost nothing more
calculated to turn you off religion.

Threats ⇒ Lack of Confidence

I have great difficulty having any respect for a religion that has so little confidence in the truth of its
beliefs that it feels reduced to using threats in order to propagate those beliefs.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

Torturing To Death A Lame Idea

It’s a truly disgusting idea that the creator of the universe — capable of inventing the laws of
physics and designing the evolutionary process — that this protégé
of supernatural intellect couldn’t think of a better way to forgive our sins than to have himself tortured to
death.

Two Religions Cannot Be Right

Two religions cannot both be right because they contradict each other, yet they can both be wrong.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

Given that there are over 10,000 religions, the odds of picking the
correct one are pretty poor, almost hopeless when you consider nearly everyone just blindly follows the choice of
their parents, without even taking cursory look at any of the others, or looking for any evidence to support their
choice or looking for evidence that any of the beliefs of any of the religions are plausible.

Is a Watcher God Necessary For Morality?

People say if we don’t believe god is watching over us, we abandon morality. Are they right?

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)Sex Death and the Meaning of Life

There are two questions hidden in there.

Are atheists more or less moral than believers? In my experience Christians and Muslims behave far worse than
anyone else. Steven Pinker explains why in his book
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Research has shown that Christianity improves the
behaviour of 1/3 of the people it touches and worsens the behaviour of the other
2/3. Then there is the matter of the Catholics formally forgiving sin, undoing the fear
of the watcher in the sky.

Does god exist? The assumed loss of morality is an argument for pretending there is a god, not for his actual
existence.

We Conform to the Universe, Not the Reverse

To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow pre-ordained for us because we are so
well-suited to live in it, he [Douglas Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting
itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the
puddle.

You are the Flow

Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought
disturbing. I find the reality thrilling.

~ Dr. Richard Dawkins(born:1941-03-26 age:75)

Atheist Presidents

We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn’t admit it.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Belief in Belief In God

I have a feeling that not that many people actually believe in God. Many people believe in belief in God. That
is, they think it is a Good Thing™ and they try to believe in God, they hope to believe in God, they wish
they could believe in God, they go through all the motions, they try very hard to be devout. Sometimes they succeed
and for some periods of their life they actually do, in some sense, believe there is a God and they think they are
the better for it. Otherwise, they behave like people who probably don’t believe in God. Very few people
behave as if they really believe in God. A lot of people behave as if they believe they should
believe in god. How would you behave if you believed in God? You would, perhaps — and some people do this
— be prepared to take what other people would consider suicidal risks because you believe God is going to be
there to save you. You would be prepared to give away everything you owned because God commanded you to do it and
so forth.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Definition Of Religion

Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or
agents whose approval is to be sought.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Dying Gasps

I don’t think there is any religious revival. I think what we are hearing, the furor, is merely the
hysterical response of the churches the handwriting on the wall that they are seeing.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

God is as Childish as Santa Claus

The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our
delight — that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything [that] a sane, undeluded adult
could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned
altogether.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

The Hurt Feelings Card

It’s a no win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible
to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

No Reasons for God

There are no good reasons to believe in god.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Reasons for Declaring Belief

Reasons for declaring belief is not are not the same as reasons for believing in god.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Religious Isolation

Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all
breaking down.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Seminaries Destroy Belief in God

You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Thank Goodness

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are
lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness — by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to
come.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Ways to Lead Better Lives

I even agree that the concept of god helps some people lead better lives. That does happen. Don’t ever
forget it. I just think there are better ways to help people lead better lives.

~ Daniel C. Dennett(born:1942-03-28 age:74)

Definition of Reality

Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you change your mind.

~ Phillip K. Dick(born:1928-12-16 died:1982-03-02 at age:53)

Indifferent Universe

The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent,
I am afraid.

The Birth Of Religion

A man had been betrayed by his children, by his wife and by his friends; some disloyal partners had ruined his
fortune and had plunged him into poverty. Pervaded with a profound hatred and contempt for the human race, he left
society and took refuge alone in a cave. There, pressing his fists into his eyes and contemplating a revenge
proportional to his grievances, he said: Evil people! What shall I do to punish them for their
injustice and to make them all as unhappy as they deserve? Ah! if it were possible to imagine it — to
intoxicate them with a great fantasy to which they would attach more importance than to their lives and about which
they would never be able to agree! Instantly he rushed out of the cave, shouting, God!
God! Echoes without number repeated around him, God! God! This fearful name was
carried from pole to pole, and heard everywhere with astonishment. At first men prostrated themselves, then they
got up again, asked each other, argued with each other, became bitter, cursed each other, hated each other, cut
each other’s throats and the fatal wish of the misanthropist was fulfilled. For such has been in the past,
such will be in the future, the story of a being at all times equally important and incomprehensible.

~ Denis Diderot(born:1713-10-05 died:1784-07-31 at age:70)
French philosopher Addition to the Philosophical Thoughts

Certainty

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are
revealed. They are entirely different things.

Destruction of Passions

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who
tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing and who, if he succeeded,
would end up a complete monster!

Kings and Priests

Misconceptions

Mme La Maréchale: Are you not Monsieur Crudeli?
Crudeli: Yes, Madame
Mme La Maréchale: Then you’re the man who doesn’t believe in anything.
Crudeli: In person, madame.
Mme La Maréchale: Yet your moral principles are the same as those of a believer?

Crudeli: Why should they not be — as long as the believer is an honest man?
Mme La Maréchale: And do you act upon your principles?
Crudeli: To the best of my ability.
Mme La Maréchale: What? You don’t steal? You don’t kill people? You don’t rob them?
Crudeli: Very rarely.
Mme La Maréchale: Then what do you gain by not being a believer?
Crudeli: Nothing at all, madame. Is one a believer from motives of profit?

~ Denis Diderot(born:1713-10-05 died:1784-07-31 at age:70)
French philosopher, Conversation with a Christian Lady1774

Money as National God

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants
will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty
the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not
exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin
themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don’t
have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the
outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority and a source of corruption for
all.

Religious Intolerance

There is not a Musselman[Muslim] alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God
and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on
their side.

Theological Ignorance

Unquestioning Acceptance is not Evidence

A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has
never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally,
because it is the touchstone.

Motive for Proselytising

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: If I did not know about God and sin,
would I go to hell?No, said the priest, not if you did not
know. Then why, asked the Inuit earnestly, did you tell
me?

~ Annie Dillard(born:1945 age:71)Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Cult vs Religion

In a cult, there’s a person at the top who knows its a scam. In a religion, that person is dead.

~ Dusty

Mechanism of the Soul

There is no life after death. If you believe in life after death, tell me what particles contain the information
that moves your soul from place to place. Is it electrons? Because those would be easy to notice because electrons
are electrically charged. It is actually quite a lot of charge. Is it atoms? But the atoms don’t move very
much when you die. If you believe that there is some way you have an immortal soul, that travels from place to
place, then you are not just saying we don’t know how it works, you are saying that current knowledge of the
laws of physics is wrong [And by extension, all technology based on this knowledge does not work. For example,
computers and nuclear weapons must be a sham.] which means you had better give me a good reason to believe our
current knowledge of the laws of physics is wrong because it is not.

~ E:\mindprod\quote\religion.html(born:1966-10-05 age:50)

Early scientists were convince all life contained some sort of vital force and in addition humans
had a soul that left the body at death and went to have an afterlife. They searched and search and could find
neither. Further, modern particle physicists on theoretical grounds say no particle could exist to support
souls.

Respecting Beliefs

Respecting bad beliefs on the whole is far too close to affirming them for my taste.

~ J. T. Eberhard(born:1981 age:35)

Science vs Religion

The history of understanding the world has been a one-way erosion of religion. There have been countless
examples of where a religious answer has been replaced by a scientific answer. There has never been an example of
when a scientific answer was replaced by a religious answer.

~ J. T. Eberhard(born:1981 age:35)

Where Does the Universe Come From?

You will say to me But where does the universe come from if not from God? Where does life
come from if not from God? And I don’t know. I don’t have the first clue. Neither do
cosmologists. But neither, dear Christian, do you.

~ J. T. Eberhard(born:1981 age:35)

Death = Before Birth

I know it is coming and I do not fear it because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.
I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born and I
think of death as the same state.

~ Roger Ebert(born:1942-06-18 died:2013-04-04 at age:70)

Descent into Fantasy

For many, the regressive belief in superstitions and miracles is an escape from the hardships of life. Once
trapped into irrationalism, they become more incapable of mastering reality. It is a vicious circle, like an
addiction. They become vulnerable to exploitation by astrologers, godmen, dubious pseudo-psychologists, corrupt
politicians and the whole mega-industry of irrationalism.

~ Sanal Edamaruku(born:1955 age:61)

All Religion

Religion is all bunk.

~ Thomas Alva Edison(born:1847-02-11 died:1931-10-18 at age:84)

Reading The Bible

If god wrote a book, wouldn’t you want to read what he had to say?

~ Bart D. Ehrman(born:1955-10-05 age:61)

It is odd that almost no Christians have had the courtesy to read a book they claim god wrote and
they claim to believe, and claim to be the guiding principle of their life. The only people you run across who have
read it cover to cover are atheists (often formerly Christian). Even atheists will read at least one book by a
famous author before meeting him.

Bases for Moral Behaviour

A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious
basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of
reward after death.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Be Useful

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Dismissing the Bible

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection
of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how
subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and
have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an
incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose
mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience
goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack
of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an
external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality
otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all,
as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations
of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a
certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we
are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluations of human behaviour. What separates us
are only intellectual props and rationalisation in
Freud’s language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about
concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)
from a letter to Eric
Gutkind, translated from German.

Einstein on the Origin of Gods

During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man’s own
image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal
world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Einstein was an Atheist

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically
repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this, but have expressed it clearly. If
something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world
so far as our science can reveal it.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Fear of Death is Unjustified

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone
who’s dead.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Follow Your Conscience

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

God is a Reflection of Human Frailty

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after
our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)
in a column for The New York Times 1930-11-09

Good for Reward Alone

If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Morality is an Exclusively Human Concern

I do not believe in immortality of the individual and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with
no superhuman authority behind it.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

On Proof

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Compare that with a religious man. No amount of evidence can ever convince him he is wrong.

Rewards and Punishments are so Childish

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Souls are Meaningless

Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a
soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

There is Nothing Chosen About the Jews

For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions and the Jewish
people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me
than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are
protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)
from a letter to Eric Gutkind, translated from German.

Unthinking Resect for Authority

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

We Live For Other People

What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose
he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going
deeper, we exist for our fellow-humans — in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our
happiness depends and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie
of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other
people, living and dead and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am
still receiving.

~ Albert Einstein(born:1879-03-14 died:1955-04-18 at age:76)

Hypnosis and Religion Are Intimately Linked

There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena and religion.

~ Havelock Ellis(born:1859-02-02 died:1939-07-08 at age:80)

Jerusalem Needs a Lunatic Asylum

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic
asylum.

~ Havelock Ellis(born:1859-02-02 died:1939-07-08 at age:80).

Uninformed Opinions

Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that
everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our
opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding,
it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.

~ Harlan Ellison(born:1934-05-27 age:82)

You may have a right to hold a foolish, baseless opinion, but you don’at have a right to
insist everyone treat you and your foolish opinion with respect.

What is Death Like?

Death is absolutely safe. It is like taking off an old shoe.

~ Emmanuel
channeled by Pat Rodegast

Introducing Pastafarianism

One of the central teachings of the Reformed Pastafarian Church is that 50 to 1 is balanced. There is no greater gift that parents can give their
children than the gift of faith in Pastafariansim. To give this gift, the best and indeed most balanced education
should have for every 50 hours of religious instruction, praising FSM, one hour of
criticism of heathen and heretical faiths, some atheist and agnostic bashing should also take place. Then the
children will grow into well rounded young adults and they will see the truth in the Pastafarian Gospel.

Death is Nothing to Fear

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness and death is the
privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life
enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has
no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live.

~ Epicurus(born:341 BC died:270 BC at age:71)
Greek philosopher.

Fearing Death

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist
when I do?

~ Epicurus(born:341 BC died:270 BC at age:71)
Greek philosopher.

God is Logically Inconsistent

The Riddle of Epicurus
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

~ Epicurus(born:341 BC died:270 BC at age:71)

From a mathematician’s point of view, anything inconsistent is false or does not exist.
Christians deal with Epicurus by ignoring him. But this is a knockout blow for Christianity.

I am Not a Tadpole

I did not evolve. I am not a tadpole. I am just the way I always was.

~ evangelist
,

This poor boob does not understand even the basics of evolution. Nothing evolves during its
lifetime. Offspring are slightly different from parents.

Contributions of Religion

Science has given us more in 200 years that religion has in 2000.

~ Pi’s fatherLife of Pi

Not Knowing Is Better than Being Wrong

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more
interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible
beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things. But I’m not absolutely sure of anything
and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why
we’re here and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit; if I can’t figure it
out, then I go onto something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not
knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is,
as far as I can tell — possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.

~ Richard P. Feynman(born:1918-05-11 died:1988-02-15 at age:69)

Not Knowing is Just Fine

I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a
mysterious universe without any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It
doesn’t frighten me.

~ Richard P. Feynman(born:1918-05-11 died:1988-02-15 at age:69)

The Virtue of Uncertainty

This attitude of mind — this attitude of uncertainty — is vital to the scientist and it is this
attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot
retreat from it anymore.

~ Richard P. Feynman(born:1918-05-11 died:1988-02-15 at age:69)

Jesus in Hollywood

Jesus is a powerful guy in Hollywood. Not quite as powerful as Vin Diesel, but powerful.

~ Christian Finnegan(born:1973-01-01 age:43)1965-10

Preposterous Vanity

Men have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole
creation does not suspect their existence.

~ Camille Flammarion(born:1842 died:1925 at age:83)
French astronomer

The Bullshitter

The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at
all, as the eyes of the honest person and the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in
getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just
picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Faith is Blind

To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.

~ Benjamin Franklin(born:1706-01-17 died:1790-04-17 at age:84)

Historical Christianity

If we look back in history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find a few that have
not in their turns been persecutors and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution
extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England
blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practised it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but
fell into the practice themselves both there (England) and New England.

~ Benjamin Franklin(born:1706-01-17 died:1790-04-17 at age:84)

Seeing by Faith

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.

~ Benjamin Franklin(born:1706-01-17 died:1790-04-17 at age:84)

Unintelligible Dogma

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.

~ Benjamin Franklin(born:1706-01-17 died:1790-04-17 at age:84)

Literalised Myth

Christianity is a myth that has been literalised.

~ Timothy Freke(born:1959 age:57)

Freud Was An Atheist

Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out
unbeliever.

~ Sigmund Freud(born:1856-05-06 died:1939-09-23 at age:83)

God the Superfather

At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.

~ Sigmund Freud(born:1856-05-06 died:1939-09-23 at age:83)

Religion = OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)

It could be ventured to understand obsessive compulsive neurosis as the pathological counterpart of religious
development, to define neurosis as an individual religiosity; to define religion as a universal obsessive
compulsive neurosis.

~ Sigmund Freud(born:1856-05-06 died:1939-09-23 at age:83)

Religion Generated Dishonesty

Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and
intellectual misdemeanor.

~ Sigmund Freud(born:1856-05-06 died:1939-09-23 at age:83)

Religion in Patently Infantile

The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly
attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above
this view of life.

~ Sigmund Freud(born:1856-05-06 died:1939-09-23 at age:83)

Religion is a Neurosis

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.

~ Sigmund Freud(born:1856-05-06 died:1939-09-23 at age:83)

Islamic View

God has no mercy on one who has no mercy for others.

None of you truly believes (in God) until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.

He who eats his fill while his neighbour goes without food is not a believer (in God).

The truthful and trustworthy businessman is associated with the prophets, the saints and the martyrs.

Powerful is not he who knocks the other down, indeed powerful is he who controls himself in a fit of
anger.

God does not judge according to your bodies and appearances but He scans your hearts and looks into your
deeds.

A man walking along a path felt very thirsty. Reaching a well he descended into it, drank his fill and came
up. Then he saw a dog with its tongue hanging out, trying to lick up mud to quench its thirst. The man saw that
the dog was feeling the same thirst that he had felt so he went down to the well again and filled his shoe with
water and gave the dog a drink. God forgave his sins for this action.

The prophet was asked: Messenger of God, are we rewarded for kindness towards
animals? He said, There is a reward for kindness to every living thing.

~ From the Hadith [commentary on the Qur’an
] collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Bayhaqui

Consider the Totality

You can’t just say there is a God because the world is beautiful.

You have to account for bone cancer in children.

You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild, live under stress, with not enough to eat
and will die violent and bloody deaths.

There is not any way that you can just choose just the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore
the true fact of what nature is.

Actually, being eaten by wild dogs is considerably kinder than being kept barely alive in pain for
months or years by busy-body Christians. At least you get it over with quickly.

I’m Offended

It’s now very common to hear people say, I’m rather offended by that. As
if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. I
find that offensive. It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase.
I am offended by that. Well, so fucking what.

~ Stephen Fry(born:1957-08-24 age:59)

The Nature of God

The god that created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac,
totally selfish.

~ Stephen Fry(born:1957-08-24 age:59)

On Being Offended

You’re offended. So fucking what!

~ Stephen Fry(born:1957-08-24 age:59)

Religious people imagine they have the right to silence others from saying anything that offends
them such as god is fictional, evolution is true, gay people should have equal rights, women should have equal
rights…

Religious Anorexia

The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. That, in erotic terms, is the
Catholic church, in a nutshell.

Why Man Created God

In the beginning, man created god and saw that it was profitable.

~ fsx23

We tend to focus debates on whether god exists. This is the least important question. We should
focus on the motives and tactics of preachers as con men, the craziness of what they claim their god wants us to
do, how they allegedly know the mind of god, the foolish behaviours of believers, how they allegedly know each of
the other 60,000 gods
are bogus, how priests abuse their authority for force children into sex and how they intimidate the parents into
looking the other way…

I Seem To Be a Verb

I seem to be a verb —
an evolutionary process —
an integral function of the universe,
and so are you.

Commanding Refuting Observations

To command their professors of astronomy to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what
they do see and not to understand what they do understand.

~ Galileo Galilei(born:1564-02-15 died:1642-01-08 at age:77)

How To Maintain a Paradox

By denying scientific principles one may maintain any paradox.

~ Galileo Galilei(born:1564-02-15 died:1642-01-08 at age:77)

Reason over Authority

In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the reasoning of a single individual.

~ Galileo Galilei(born:1564-02-15 died:1642-01-08 at age:77)

Recantation

Eppur is muove. (Yet it moves.)

~ Galileo Galilei(born:1564-02-15 died:1642-01-08 at age:77)

What Galileo muttered after being forced by Christians to recant his scientific observation that the earth moved
around the sun.

The Incompetent Tinkerer God

A god whose creation is so imperfect that he must be continually adjusting it to make it work properly seems to
me a god of relatively low order, hardly worthy of any worship.

~ Martin Gardner(born:1914-10-21 died:2010-05-22 at age:95)

Why Can’t God Use Physics?

If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are
we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures?

~ Martin Gardner(born:1914-10-21 died:2010-05-22 at age:95)

Making up BS

Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left brain interpreter can make up stories and
beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a
patient’s brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where
language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: I wanted to go get a Coke.

In other words, there is a part of your brain whose job it is to make up bullshit when it does not
know the answer.

Roots of Extremism

When someone’s neural network in unbalanced, they are ripe for conquest by a belief system they feel is
going to bring about homeostasis. The brain craves homeostasis. So when the neural network is in a condition of
severe disharmony, the person will be drawn toward extreme beliefs and practices that promise a small amount of
relief from the imbalance.

No wonder religions find the best prospecting among drug addicts, alcoholics and the down and
out.

Blasphemy

A low to protect an all-powerful, supernatural deity from getting its feelings hurt.

~ Ricky Gervais(born:1961-06-25 age:55)

Ignorance

Ignorance might be bliss for the ignorant, but for the rest of us, it’s a fucking pain in the ass.

~ Ricky Gervais(born:1961-06-25 age:55)

You are Wrong

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if you believe in god, you’re wrong.

~ Ricky Gervais(born:1961-06-25 age:55)

False Argument For God

I have compelling reasons to believe in god. My parents are deeply committed Christians, and would be devastated
to reject my faith. My wife and children believe in god. Abandoning belief in god would be disruptive. sending my
life completely off the rails.

~ Karl Giberson(born:1957-05-05 age:59)

Mr. Giberson already long abandoned his religion for evolution. This is not an argument for the existence god,
but for pretending to believe in god to avoid making waves. There is no way he can actually fool himself. He would
cause far more internal turmoil attempting to simultaneously believe two incompatible world views. It would be much
easier to settle on the belief he believes to be true. His parents may be distressed if he abandoned his religious
beliefs, but his children would take it in stride.

People Don’t Know Their Own Motivations

Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but
when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.

Beware Counterfeits

Everything you read signed God is just somebody putting their
words in My mouth.

~ God

God Defends Himself

Many people, most notably Steven Fry, have tongue lashed God for such cruelty as creating eye worms that eat out
the eyes of children. Here God Defends himself.

There are always a worst thing in the world and worst thing in the universe. You
should have seen the previous draft. There were bats that bored through your walls and drank your blood. Do you
give me credit for cancelling them? If I were to get rid of all of the diseases, parasites and congenital defects,
there would still be a worst thing in the world. You might start bitching and moaning that bananas were not big
enough, and feel very hard done by because, after all, that was the worst thing in the world.

~ God

Infallible Bible

Who said the bible is true? It certainly wasn’t me. Have you read that thing, I mean all of
it? It is positively libelous. The nerve of those twits trying to pass their work off as mine. It is an utterly
laughable forgery.

~ God

Definition of Hell

Hell begins the day that God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done and
would have done, but did not do.

I Am As God Wanted

God Evolved Out Of Fear

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of
nature and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against
him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the
God idea.

~ Emma Goldman(born:1869-06-27 died:1940-05-14 at age:70)

Gods are how Humanity Punishes Itself

The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race
from all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Brahmanistic, or what not. Mankind has been
punished long and heavily for having created its gods, nothing but pain and persecution, have been man’s lot
since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder. Man must break his fetters which have chained him to
the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a
new world upon the earth.

~ Emma Goldman(born:1869-06-27 died:1940-05-14 at age:70)

In Goldman’s time, knowledge of Buddhism was weak. She did not even know it is an atheistic
philosophy.

When Preachers Take Over the Republican Party…

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party and they’re sure trying to
do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing
demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and
won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them. … The religious factions that are
growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom… I’m frankly sick and
tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I
must believe in ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’. Just who do they think they
are?… I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of conservatism.

~ Barry Goldwater(born:1909-01-02 died:1998-05-29 at age:89)
five-term US Senator, Republican Party nominee for President in 1964 Major General, US
Air Force Reserves, author of The Conscience of a Conservative

No Extraordinary Evidence

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but I have not seen any.

~ Eliza Goroya(born:1987 age:29)

Choosing Hope over Logic is The Human Frailty

But we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity — our propensity for embracing hope and shunning
logic, our tendency to believe what we desire rather than what we observe.

Confusing Correlation with Causation

The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among causation three most serious and common
errors of human reasoning.

~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould(born:1941-09-10 died:2002-05-20 at age:60)

Definition of Fact

In science, fact can only mean confirmed to such a degree that
it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but
the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould(born:1941-09-10 died:2002-05-20 at age:60)

Dethronement of Human Arrogance

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human
arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould(born:1941-09-10 died:2002-05-20 at age:60)

Evils of Dogmatism

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview — nothing more constraining, more blinding to
innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.

~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould(born:1941-09-10 died:2002-05-20 at age:60)

Hope leads to Manipulation

When people learn no tools of judgement and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are
sown.

~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould(born:1941-09-10 died:2002-05-20 at age:60).

Teddy Bear Planet

We long to situate ourselves on a benevolent, warm, furry, encompassing planet, created to provide our material
needs and constructed for our dominion and delectation. Unfortunately, this pipedream of succor from the realm of
meaning (and therefore the magisterium of religion), imposes definite and unrealistic demands upon the factual
construction of nature (under the magisterium of science). But nature, who is as she is and who existed in earthly
form for 4.5 billion years before we arrived to impose our interpretations upon her,
greets us with sublime indifference and no preference for accommodating our yearnings.

But the religionists have no intention of staying on their side of the fence. They impose crackpot
religious ideas on important scientific issues such as global warming and overpopulation. Further, they want to
enlist the law to aid them with their superstitious hatred of gays. They want to subjugate women.

Graham’s Anti-Muslim Propaganda

We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not
the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God and I believe it [Islam] is a
very evil and wicked religion. … When you read the Koran and you read the verses from the Koran, it
instructs the killing of the infidel, for those that are non-Muslim.

Obviously, Muslims have killed infidels, but I read the Qur’an
cover to cover and I found nothing encouraging or forgiving the practice. In fact, the Qur’an
demands much more temperate behaviour than the bible does. I feel confident in accusing Graham of lying about
having read the Qur’an.

Revealing Faith

If you talk about your faith you risk thinking you are much better than you actually are.

~ Judy Graves(born:1949 age:67)

Mystery Bitches

In the beginning there was Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. And Cain and Abel got
married [presumably not to each other]. To who? Where did these mystery bitches come
from?

~ Eddie Griffin(born:1968-07-15 age:48)

Atheism is the Wake Up Call

Christians are afraid atheism is the real truth. They hate the non-believers (a form of fear) for this reason.
Atheism is the wake-up call they don’t want.

~ Stan Grimes

Downside of Morality

Queerer Than We Can Suppose

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my
own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

~ J.B.S. Haldane(born:1892-11-05 died:1964-12-01 at age:72)

Respecting You ≠ Respecting Your Beliefs

I have so much respect for you, I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs.

~ Johann Eduard Hari(born:1979-01-21 age:37)
British journalist

Believing in Bad Evidence

It is a very strange sort of loving god that would make salvation depend on believing in him on bad
evidence.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Bible is Ordinary

It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.

Bible a Poor Book of Morality

If god loves us and wanted to guide up with a book of morality it is very strange to have given us a book that
supports slavery and that demands that we murder people for imaginary crimes like witchcraft.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Collective Insanity

Religion allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on
their own.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Creation Happened After the Discovery of Beer

Some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation… This means
120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the
Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.

How can you have any respect at all for a people so wilfully ignorant? They are behaving like
illiterate, superstitious, medieval peasants.

Cult of Human Sacrifice

Christianity is a cult of human sacrifice. Christianity is not a religion that repudiates human sacrifice. It is
a religion that celebrates a single human sacrifice as though it were effective.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Definition of Faith

Faith is the permission religious people give one another to believe ridiculous things.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Desperate for the Ridiculous

Most of the people, most of the time, are desperate to believe ridiculous and divisive ideas for patently
emotional reasons.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Determining Truth

When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and
logical arguments, or one isn’t. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine some other standard
of intellectual integrity applies.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Devaluing Evidence

Religion is the only area of our lives where having no reasons, or having very tenuous reasons, is considered a
boon, really. It is often considered even more ennobling to take things on faith. This is the parable of Doubting
Thomas.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

God is Cruel and Unjust

When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust,
because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious
psychopath, we’re told that? God is mysterious.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Hell Indicates God is not Looking out for You

If having half of your people systematically delivered to the furnace does not count as evidence against the
notion that an all-powerful God is looking out for your interests, it seems reasonable to assume that nothing
could.

Implications Of Knowing We Will Die

We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be possible to
live ethically — with a genuine concern for the happiness of other sentient beings — without presuming
to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you
will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and
family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to
them in the meantime?

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Just Us Chickens

To not believe in God is to know that it falls to us to make the world a better place.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Mad Core Beliefs

While religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. This is not surprising, since
most religions, have merely canonised a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to
us as if they were primordial truths. This leave billions of us believing what no sane person could believe on his
own. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at
the heart of many of our religious traditions.

Mormonism in a Nutshell

Mormonism, it seems to me, objectively is just a little bit more idiotic than Christianity is. It has to be. It
is Christianity plus some very stupid ideas.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Only Lunatics

Religion allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions what only lunatics could believe on
their own.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Perpetual Immunity from Criticism

Religion is the only form of thinking in which bad ideas are held in perpetual immunity from criticism and doing
so is considered sacred — this is the act of faith.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Religion Creates Lunatics

This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what
only lunatics could believe on their own.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Science Supersedes Scripture

Every one of our specific sciences has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of scripture, from cosmology to
ecology to economics. We know more about ourselves than anyone writing in the bible or the
Qur’an
did.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Sting of Death

What is uniquely consoling about religious belief is that it takes the sting out of death. It’s the story
that tells you that death is not a bad thing, despite appearances. This is why it is so deeply attractive to so
many millions and millions of people, but in geopolitical term we want the sting in death. The people who are not
deterred by the threat of death are supremely dangerous when they get their hands on the big bombs, and we do not
want millenarian Christians who think Jesus is going to come down out of the clouds at any minute and save the day
to be writing our nuclear policy or deciding how any mid-east peace crisis is resolved or not resolved.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Stop Rewarding Faith

People should no longer win points in our culture for pretending to be certain about things they manifestly
cannot be certain about.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

The Translation

I think when you say to someone You are fool not to believe in evolution or a fool to
believe the universe is 6000 years old. I think that gets translated as
You are a fool to think that your daughter who died in a car accident is really in heaven with
god.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Transubstantiation Insanity

If you think that saying a few Latin words over your pancakes is going to turn them into the body of Elvis
Presley, you have lost you mind, but you think more or less the same thing about a cracker and the body of Jesus,
you are just a Catholic.

~ Sam Harris(born:1967-01-01 age:49)

Difference Between Liberal and Conservative

One of the essential differences between the liberal and conservative worldview is that the liberals believe in
rationality, whereas conservative believe that human events are ordered by forces that are beyond the ability of
our rational mind to understand or control.

Fig Fag

Poor Fred [Phelps] — he’s actually working on a typo and somebody ought to tell him. Twice in the
New Testament Jesus withered fig trees, Isaiah withered a fig tree and there’s another place in the Old
Testament — I think it’s in Psalms — where a fig tree was withered. God hates
figs, not fags!

~ Thom Hartmann(born:1951-05-07 age:65)

Biology is Also Determined

Though we feel we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that
biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the
orbits of the planets.

In other words, Hawking says free will is an illusion, just as much as the illusion that
characters on celluloid have free will. Since nobody can help what they do, you might say punishment makes no
sense, but punishment too can be part of the conditioning that controls ultimately what someone does. A car does
not enjoy the illusion of free will, but you can still do things that influence its behaviour. Since reality is far
to complicated to predict reliable, the fact you don’t have free will does not make any practical difference.
If you realise others are not really choosing to behave as they do, you can focus instead on what you can do that
will influence them to behave the way you want, rather than just screaming at them for making idiotic choices. When
you realise that your attempts to influence others are not really choices either, it makes your head spin.

Religion is a Fairy Story

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the
brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken
down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

~ Stephen Hawking(born:1942-01-08 age:74)

Certainty Does Not Guarantee Correctness

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

~ Margaret Heffernan(born:1955 age:61)

Religious Child Abuse

Religious child maltreatment is child abuse or neglect that is enabled by religious beliefs held by
perpetrators, victims or the surrounding community.

~ Janet Heimlich(born:1962-02-08 age:54)

Godly Morals

Most gods have the morals of a spoiled child.

~ Robert A. Heinlein(born:1907-07-07 died:1988-05-08 at age:80)

Jehovah, Creator of Loose Bowels

How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm
and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil,
scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?

Thinking Causes Atheism

If you Don’t think I am Infinitely Loving, I will Torture You

According to Christianity, eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God’s infinite love. That’s
the message we’re brought up with, believe or die. Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all
those options.

~ Bill Hicks(born:1961-12-16 died:1994-02-26 at age:32)

Meaning of the Cross

I think it’s interesting how people act on their beliefs. A lot of Christians, for instance, wear crosses
around their necks. Nice sentiment, but do you think when Jesus comes back, he’s really going to want to look
at a cross?

~ Bill Hicks(born:1961-12-16 died:1994-02-26 at age:32)

Pie In The Sky

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die — that’s a lie!

~ Joe Hill(born:1879-10-07 died:1915-11-19 at age:36), IWW (Industrial Workers of the World)
folk song performed by Woody Guthrie.

Himmler on Homosexuality

Roughly 7 to 8 percent of men in Germany are homosexual. If
that is how things remain, our nation will fall to pieces because of that plague. Those who practice homosexuality
deprive Germany of the children they owe her.

~ Heinrich Himmler(born:1900-10-07 died:1945-05-23 at age:44)

So in the Nazi view, homosexuality was wicked because gay people failed to hand kids over as
cannon fodder to the state. You would think they would be equality upset with unmarried, sterile or childless
couples.

Bald a Hair Colour?

Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair colour.

~ Don Hirschberg

Avoiding Cognitive Dissonance

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain,
replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and
beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure,
feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

Bible Champions Evils

The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for
bride-price and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by
crude, uncultured human mammals.

Biblical Inconsistency

[On biblical inconsistency.] Their multiple authors — none of whom published anything until many years
after the Crucifixion — cannot agree on anything of importance. Matthew and Luke cannot concur on the Virgin
Birth or the genealogy of Jesus. They flatly contradict each other on the Flight into
Egypt, Matthew saying that Joseph was warned in a dream to make an immediate
escape and Luke saying that all three stayed in Bethlehem until Mary’s purification
according to the laws of Moses, which would make it forty days and then went back to Nazareth via Jerusalem.
(Incidentally, if the dash to Egypt to conceal a child from Herod’s infanticide campaign has any truth to it,
then Hollywood and many, many Christian inconographers have been deceiving us. It would have been very difficult to
take a blond, blue-eyed baby to the Nile delta without attracting rather than avoiding attention.)

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Billy Graham

Billy Graham is a boring, racist charlatan.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Chimp Gods

The gods we create are the gods you would expect to be created by a species half a chromosome away from
chimpanzees.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

The Christian Art of Torture

The museums of medieval Europe, from Holland to Tuscany, are crammed with instruments and devices upon which the
holy men labored devoutly, in order to see how long they could keep someone alive while being roasted. It is not
needful to go into further details, but there were also religious books of instruction in this art and guides for
the detection of heresy by pain.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Church Discourages Morality

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side,
there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more
selfish and perhaps above all, more stupid.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Church-Sponsored Child Abuse

The Shia fundamentalists in Iran lowered the age of consent to nine, perhaps in
admiring emulation of the age of the youngest wife of the Prophet Muhammed. Hindu child brides in India are flogged and sometimes burned alive, if the
pathetic dowry they bring is judged to be too small. The Vatican and its vast network of dioceses, has in the past
decade alone been forced to admit complicity in a huge racket of child rape and child torture, mainly but by no
means exclusively homosexual, in which known pederasts and sadists were shielded from the law and reassigned to
parishes where the pickings of the innocent and defenseless were often richer. In Ireland alone — once an
unquestioning disciple of Holy Mother Church — it is now estimated that the unmolested children of religious
schools were probably the minority.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Craving Praise

Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would
be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Deconstructing Circumcision

I pose a hypothetical question. As a man of some fifty-seven years of age, I am discovered sucking the penis of
a baby boy. I ask you to picture your own outrage and revulsion. Ah, but I have my own explanation all ready. I am
a mohel: an appointed circumciser and foreskin remover. My authority comes from an ancient text, which commands me
to take a baby boy’s penis in hand, cut around the prepuce and complete the action by taking his penis in my
mouth, sucking off the foreskin and spitting out the amputated flap along with a mouthful of blood and saliva.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Dismissed Without Evidence

Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that
what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Divine Warrants are Bogus

No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Dogs vs Cats

Owners of dogs will have noticed that if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they
will think you are a god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide the with food and
shelter and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are god.

Effect of Religion

Establishing A Dictatorship

The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God’s representative on earth.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Extraordinary Claims

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence where rather daringly [Christianity] provides not even
ordinary evidence for its extraordinary supernatural claims.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Faith Is Not Virtue

If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good and to expose it for
what it is, a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are
in the highest degree unscrupulous.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

God loved Ospreys Better

[Yet another argument against intelligent design.] Though it is true we are the highest and smartest animals,
ospreys have eyes we have calculated to be sixty times more powerful and sophisticated than our own and that
blindness, often caused by microscopic parasites that are themselves miracles of ingenuity, is one of the oldest
and most tragic disorders known to man. And why award the superior eye (or in the case of cat or bat, also the ear)
to the inferior species.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Hitler the Christian

If Nazism’s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of
Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he is doing
God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that
every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins I
swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer? How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi
soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist
Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for
Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every
year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary
system.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

You might also ask why Hitler’s plan for the Jews was plagiarised from Martin
Luther’s.

Implausibility a Pregnant Girl Would Lie

I think it was David Hume who put it slightly vulgarly, this was again about the virgin birth I think. Which is
more likely… that the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

In Praise of Skepticism

Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our
existence.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Inspiring Awe

To reflect upon the event horizon is a great deal more awe-inspiring than a burning bush or a wooden statue that
weeps or pees or bleeds.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Islamic Arrogance

Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms helping itself
from earlier books and traditions as the occasion appeared to require. Thus far from being born in the clear light
of history… Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its
borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or surrender as a maxim to its
adherence and demands deference from non-believers in the bargain. There is nothing, absolute nothing in tis
teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance.
Christopher Hitchens on Islam and Muhammad

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Jerry Falwell Was Full of It

If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Meaning Without God

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to
win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension
and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful and that the natural world is wonderful
enough — and even miraculous enough if you insist — I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How,
in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no
expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?

Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and
patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don’t believe in our
god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart’s content?) Just as the
answer to the latter question is: self — respect and the desire for the respect of others — while in
the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity
— so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship,
love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature and music and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of
others cannot be called meaningless except if the person living it is also an
existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact
possible to live one’s everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and
futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of
supernatural nonentities — but there, there. Enough.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Mock Religion

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… one of the beginnings of human emancipation is
the ability to laugh at authority.

Motto Of the Catholic Church

No Worse than Hitler

[On Catholic sex abuse scandals.] It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say
that they are no worse than Nazis or Stalinists.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Phony Claims

I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the
mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim — so modestly and so humbly
— to possess. It is time to withdraw our respect from such fantastic claims, all
of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.

Postpone Until the Age of Reason

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in
a quite different world.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Price of Redemption

Redemption is promised at the low price of surrender of your critical faculties.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Rape Recommended

[On the moral deficiency of the Old Testament.] Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing about rape,
nothing about the protection of children from cruelty and nothing about genocide? Or is it exactingly in context to notice that some of these very offenses are about to be positively recommended?

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Religion Needed for Evil

If you want to get good people to do wicked things, you need religion. What do I mean by that? I mean to say,
who when they see a new-born baby arriving in their life, if anyone has ever thought, even myself, well maybe there
is something to this, look at the perfection of this little bundle. But they say this, I tell
you what though, before we go any further, we need to get a sharp knife or a stone from somewhere and start hacking
away at the genitalia of this little bundle because if we don’t we won’t be doing god’s
will.

No moral person would do such a thing unless they thought it was divinely warranted.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Religions Were Founded in Ignorance

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody-not even the mighty
Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms-had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from
the bawling and fearful infancy of our species and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for
knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children
knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion and one would like to think-though the
connection is not a fully demonstrable one — that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow
humans to hell.

Religions Were Founded in Ignorance

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody — not even the mighty Democritus who
concluded that all matter was made from atoms — had the smallest idea of what was going on. It comes from the
bawling and fearful infancy of our species and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge.
Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of
religion.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Religion’s Advantage

Religion, it is true, still possesses the huge if cumbersome and unwieldy advantage of having come first.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Self-Centred Christians

If you think all this is going on, all these gigantic fields of gravity and light with you in
mind, then you really do have a self-centredness problem.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Slave Dreams

It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us — waking and
sleeping — who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime, thought crime, just for what we
think, who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick, as
apparently we are — and then order us, on pain of eternal torture to be well again.

To demand this, to wish this to be true is to wish to live as an abject slave.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Source of Morality

Religion gets its morality from us. We don’t get our morality from religion.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Stupid God

Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the
planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I’ll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000
years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life
expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war,
suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete
indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks That’s enough of
that. It’s time to intervene and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human
sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don’t lets appeal to the Chinese, for
example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have
another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can’t be believed by a thinking person.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

There Is No God

The discovery there is no god is a great relief because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial
North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Useless Religion

The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which
religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation, but the wrong culprit. Human sacrifices were made
preeminently in times of epidemics, useless prayers were uttered, bogus miracles
attested to, and scapegoats — such as Jews or heretics or witches — hunted down and burned.

Vicarious Redemption

I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one [teaching] is the most immoral of all and
that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as
scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love
you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can’t take your
sins away because I can’t abolish your responsibility and I shouldn’t offer to do so. Your
responsibility has to stay with you. There’s no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no
redemption at all. It’s just a part of wish-thinking and I don’t think wish-thinking is good for people
either.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

What Do Humans Exist?

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

What You Can Dismiss

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Why So Many Different Religions?

We [antitheists] maintain the pluralism of faith, and the schisms within existing faiths, all churches,
synagogues or mosques, gudwaras or temples, claiming to possess or open an avenue to the truth, and competing with
one another is susceptible of a very simple explanation: the pluralism of religion is attributable to the fact that
man created god, not the reverse.

~ Christopher Hitchens(born:1949-04-13 died:2011-12-15 at age:62)

Every schism indicates a matter than could not be resolved by argument or direct study of where
the truth lay in the matter. It was one made up story against another, one delusion competing with another. If
religion were absolutely true, all religions would gradually converge on the same story. The very opposite
happened.

Christianity = Extinguish Jews

I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the
Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

~ Adolf Hitler(born:1889-04-20 died:1945-04-30 at age:56)

Hitler Hates Atheists

We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against
the atheistic movement and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations; we have stamped it out.

~ Adolf Hitler(born:1889-04-20 died:1945-04-30 at age:56)

Hitler on Faith

We are convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the
atheist movement.

It is amazing how many Christians will lie that Hitler was an atheist not a Christian, trying to
pretend his evil was caused by rejecting rather than embracing their infinitely cruel god.

Hitler Professes His Christian Faith

Besides that, I believe one thing: there is a Lord God! And this Lord God creates the peoples.

~ Adolf Hitler(born:1889-04-20 died:1945-04-30 at age:56)

Positive Christianity

The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any
particular confession.

~ Adolf Hitler(born:1889-04-20 died:1945-04-30 at age:56)

Fear of the Invisible

Fear of the invisible is the natural seed which everyone in himself calleth religion.

~ Thomas Hobbes(born:1588-04-05 died:1679-12-04 at age:91)Leviathan

Choice of Bogeyman

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

Faith and Terror

Both Faith and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual self-respect. Terror crushes the
autonomy of self-respect, where Faith obtains its more or less voluntary surrender. In both cases, the result of
the elimination of individual autonomy is — automatism. Both Faith and Terror reduce the human entity to a
formula that can be manipulated at will.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

Faith Corrupts

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

Haters of Human Nature

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who
wants to turn them into puppets.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

Lovers of the Present are Not Vicious

Those who are in love with the present can be cruel and corrupt but not genuinely vicious. They cannot be
methodically and consistently ruthless.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

To be ruthless requires belief that our life on earth is but a brief prelude to an afterlife, or a
temporary sacrifice before some utopia can be instituted.

Moving Mountains

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves
mountains.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

Religion is Self Hate

Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious
preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication in the obverse side of
self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, it is a
malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

Religion: Enemy of Joy

Not only does a mass movement depict the present as mean and miserable — it deliberately makes it so. It
fashions a pattern of individual existence that is dour, hard, repressive and dull. It decries pleasures and
comforts and extols the rigorous life. It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable and represents
the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral. To enjoy oneself is to have truck with the enemy — the present.
The prime objective of the ascetic ideal preached by most movements is to breed contempt for the present. The
campaign against the appetites is an effort to pry loose tenacious tentacles holding on to the present. That this
cheerless individual life runs its course against a colorful and dramatic background of collective pageantry serves
to accentuate its worthlessness.

~ Eric Hoffer(born:1902-07-25 died:1983-05-21 at age:80)

There are two main problems with utopian movements:

There is no sacrifice too great for an utterly perfect future.

Utopian movements like to make the present as miserable as possible e.g. Communists and Christians.

Bloodthirsty Gods

The Jehovah of the Jews is a suspicious tyrant, who breathes nothing but blood, murder and carnage and who
demands that they should nourish him with the vapours of animals. The Jupiter of the Pagans is a lascivious
monster. The Moloch of the Phoenicians is a cannibal. The pure mind of the Christians resolved, in order to appease
his fury, to crucify his own son. The savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals
which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.

Clouds and Phantoms of Religion

Ignorance and Fear Created the Gods

If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that
imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that
tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.

Ignorance Gave Birth To Gods

Monumental Conceit

Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns
are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits and man, an infinitely minute part
of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for
himself.

Nothing in Nature is Contemptible

In Nature nothing; is mean or contemptible and it is only pride, originating in a false idea of our superiority,
which causes our contempt for some of her productions. In the eyes of Nature, however, the oyster that vegetates at
the bottom of the sea is as dear and perfect as the proud biped who devours it.

Religion Consecrates the Revolting

If experience be consulted, it will be found there is no action, however, abominable, that has not received the
applause of some people. Parricide — the sacrifice of children — robbery — usurpation —
cruelty — intolerance — prostitution, have all in their turn been licensed actions and have been deemed
laudable and meritorious deeds with some nations of the earth. Above all, Religion has consecrated the most
unreasonable, the most revolting customs.

Suffering from After-Death Fears

People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death.
Wouldn’t it be better to depend on blind matter… than a god who puts out traps for people, invites
them to sin and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent. Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure
to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their
example preventing others from committing crimes.

Why Fear and Infinitely Good God?

If God be infinitely good, what reason have we to fear him? If he be infinitely wise, wherefore disturb
ourselves with our condition? If he be omniscient, wherefore inform him of our wants and fatigue him with our
prayers? If he be omnipresent, wherefore erect temples to him? If he be Lord of all, wherefore make sacrifices and
offerings to him? If he be just, wherefore believe that he punishes those creatures whom he has filled with
imbecility? If his grace works every thing in man, what reason has he to reward him? If he be omnipotent, how can
he be offended; and how can we resist him? If he be rational, how can he be enraged against those blind mortals to
whom he has left the liberty of acting irrationally? If he be immutable, by what right shall we pretend to make him
change his decrees? If he be inconceivable, wherefore should we occupy ourselves with him? If he has spoken,
wherefore is the universe not convinced? If the knowledge of a God be the most necessary thing, wherefore is it not
more evident and more manifest?

Exploring the Universe

Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure
science.

~ Edwin Hubble(born:1889-11-20 died:1953-09-28 at age:63)

Equipped with his five senses, the Christian refuses to use them and instead imagines the universe
as it might be and calls the adventure faith.

Just Grow Up

Why be born again, when you can just grow up?

~ Jack Huberman

Torch vs Extinguisher

There is in every village a torch — the schoolteacher and an extinguisher: the priest.

~ Victor Hugo(born:1802-02-26 died:1885-05-22 at age:83)

Chaos Impresses Christians

Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles, though the most opposite of the plan of a wise
superintendent, impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religion.

~ David Hume(born:1711-04-26 died:1776-08-25 at age:65)The Natural History of Religion

Crimes are Compatible with Piety

The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and
devotion; hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man’s morals, from the
fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.

~ David Hume(born:1711-04-26 died:1776-08-25 at age:65)

Dangerous Errors

Generally speaking, errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy are only ridiculous.

~ David Hume(born:1711-04-26 died:1776-08-25 at age:65)

Establishing a Miracle

That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of a kind, that its falsehood
would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.

~ David Hume(born:1711-04-26 died:1776-08-25 at age:65)

Virgin Birth

Which is more likely: that the whole natural order is suspended, or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?

~ David Hume(born:1711-04-26 died:1776-08-25 at age:65)

Behaviour of Gods

Gods always behave like the people who create them.

~ Zora Neale Hurston(born:1891-01-07 died:1960-01-28 at age:69)

An Unfounded Rumour

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have
never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour
and survival a thing beyond the bounds of possibility.

~ Aldous Huxley(born:1894-07-26 died:1963-11-22 at age:69)

Animals Are Too Smart For Religion

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion… Dogs
do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a
liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits
into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent
but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.

~ Aldous Huxley(born:1894-07-26 died:1963-11-22 at age:69)

Definition of God

God: a gaseous vertebrate.

~ Aldous Huxley(born:1894-07-26 died:1963-11-22 at age:69)

Homemade Gods

All gods are homemade and it is we who pull their strings and so, give them the power to pull ours.

~ Aldous Huxley(born:1894-07-26 died:1963-11-22 at age:69)

The Most Unnatural Perversion

Chastity — the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.

~ Aldous Huxley(born:1894-07-26 died:1963-11-22 at age:69)

The Secret Doubt of the Fanatic

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

~ Aldous Huxley(born:1894-07-26 died:1963-11-22 at age:69)

God as Cheshire Cat

Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat.

~ Julian Huxley(born:1887-06-22 died:1975-02-14 at age:87)

The Deepest Sin

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at
its best — that is, rigidly accurate in observation and merciless to fallacy in logic.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley(born:1825-05-04 died:1895-06-29 at age:70)

Difficulty of Expression the Truth

It ought not to be unpleasant to say that which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is
painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind in that most valuable of all qualities,
honesty of word or of deed.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley(born:1825-05-04 died:1895-06-29 at age:70)

Faith is an Unpardonable Sin

Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley(born:1825-05-04 died:1895-06-29 at age:70)

Shame of the Fear of Truth

I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley(born:1825-05-04 died:1895-06-29 at age:70)

Religious Pretentions

In 1976 god gave me this song.

~ Ron Hynes(born:1950-12-07 age:66)

He is bragging This song I wrote is so good, you can only explain it by
divine intervention.

God the Psychopath

God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That’s
not free will. It’s like a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I
will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath. When god says the same
we call him loving and build churches in his honor.

~ William C. Easttom II

You Are Not That Special

We are not privileged in any way. The Copernican Revolution, if it is telling us anything, it is saying
Get over yourselves. You are not that special. You are not that important.

~ Dr. Christopher D. Impey(born:1956-01-25 age:60)

Early Call For Gender Equality

The rights of men and women should be equal and sacred-marriage should be a perfect partnership.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

This in the exact opposite of what the bible declares in I Timothy 2:12

Evidence for an Afterlife

The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and secondly, that
we are rather sorry that we have not and wish we had.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

God’s Hypocrisy

And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use
you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what
they preach.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

Growing Miracles

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

How about A Single Fact to Support Religion

We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We
have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your
reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches
for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one
fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year’s fact. We ask only
one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two
thousand years.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

Inconsistent Forgiveness

They say that when god was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for
differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, Forgive your
enemies. I say, I do; but he says, I will damn mine.
God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies
who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as
he asks us to be.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

Religion is Slavery

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

Why Churches Hate Thinkers

The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the
prosecuting witness.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll(born:1833-08-11 died:1899-07-21 at age:65)

Evidence for Non-Existence of God

If there were a god, don’t you think he would have flicked Hitler’s head off?

~ Eddie Izzard(born:1962-02-07 age:54)

Absurd Proof

The extreme agnostics insist that we can’t know that there isn’t an invisible
10.16 cm(4 in)
winged pig that determines the weather living in the tree in front of my house. OK. Now what?

There are infinitely many things you could imagine might exist, but there is no evidence at all
they actually do. It is idle speculation to wonder if such things exist when there is not a scrap of evidence for
them. This includes all the gods man has created. Wishing in your gut they existed is not evidence. Godists have no
more right to demand proof of the non existence of Jehovah the god than they would have to demand proof of the
non-existence of weather-controlling pig.

Sectarian Thinking

In Lebanon, there are as many laws as there are sects, with 18 different laws on
personal status [marriage] for Lebanon’s 18 officially-recognised religious
sects.

All Fables

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular
superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythologies.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States.

Jefferson on Calvinist Lunacy

These are the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin:

That there are three Gods.

That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.

That faith is every thing and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.

That reason in religion is of unlawful use.

That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved and certain others to be damned; and
that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third
president of the United States.

Jefferson on God

The Christian god is a being of terrific character — cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States.

Jefferson on Jehovah

The Christian god is a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States.

Jefferson on Religion

On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world
to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to
themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83)
Letter to Matthew Carey, 1816-11-11 , third president of the United States.

Logically, God should Approve of Reason more than Fear

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of
reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States, letter to Peter Carr,
1787-08-10

Neither Picks My Pocket

The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The
legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for
my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. … Reason
and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States.

But Christians do not behave in this benign way. They harass and kill gays. They force their
religion on others. They interfere with birth control, abortion, euthanasia and organ transplant decisions of
others.

Ridicule the Unintelligible

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States.

Separation of Church and State

Believing with you that religion is a matter that lies solely between man & his god… that the
legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions… Legislature should make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of
separation between church and state.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States.

Unintelligible Abstractions

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world
to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to
themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

~ Thomas Jefferson(born:1743-04-13 died:1826-07-04 at age:83), third president of the United States.

Believers

Here’s the thing about people who believe in god… They’re idiots.

~ Jim Jeffries(born:1977-02-14 age:39)

Clueless God

God built the world, but he did not know it was round.

~ Jim Jeffries(born:1977-02-14 age:39)

Conditional Love

I can tell you for sure that god does not love you unconditionally. I have already given you a condition. If you
don’t put a small amount of water on a baby’s forehead, it burns for eternity. That’s the
condition of a fucking psychopath.

~ Jim Jeffries(born:1977-02-14 age:39)

Dealing with Gay Marriage

If you hate gay marriage, then don’t marry a gay person.

~ Jim Jeffries(born:1977-02-14 age:39)

God = Santa

Christians are like a thirteen year old kid who still believes in Santa.

Holy Typo Batman

The number of dead are expected to rise.
vs
A number of dead are expected to rise.

~ Newscaster Jesus(born:1-12-25 AD age:2014)

Arbitrary Religion

There is no god, and that’s the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and
nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There my be some other nonsense in its
place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find
a way to figure it all out again.

~ Penn Jillette(born:1955-03-05 age:61)

Bible Incompetence

If the bible were published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes
and quotable phrases but there’s no plot, no structure, a tremendous amount of filler and the characters are
painfully one dimensional. Whatever you do, don’t read the bible for a moral code. It advocates prejudice,
cruelty, superstition and murder. Read it because we need more atheists.

~ Penn Jillette(born:1955-03-05 age:61)

Prayer is Rude

It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more.

~ Penn Jillette(born:1955-03-05 age:61)
illusionist

Humanity-hating Church

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

~ James Joyce(born:1882-02-02 died:1941-01-13 at age:58)

Limitation of Books

Reading books everyone died, none became any wise.
One who reads the word of Love, only becomes wise.

Intensity is Evidence of Truth, Really?

What makes fantastic declarations believable is, in part, the vehemence with which they’re proffered.
Again, in the world of spirituality as well as of pop psychology, intensity of personal belief is evidence of
truth. It is considered very bad form — even abuse — to challenge the veracity of any personal
testimony that might be offered in a twelve-step group or on a talk show, unless the testimony itself is
equivocal… Whatever sells, whatever many people believe strongly, must be true.

~ Wendy Kaminer(born:1950 age:66)

Kant’s Definition of the Good

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

~ Immanuel Kant(born:1724-04-22 died:1804-02-12 at age:79)

Universe without Purpose

The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without purpose.

~ Immanuel Kant(born:1724-04-22 died:1804-02-12 at age:79)

Kant thinks the only possibility is a tyrant god imposing a single purpose on the universe. What
if there were two purposes and you got to choose? What if there were an infinite number? What if you get to make up
your own purpose? What if the universe has no a priori purpose until you choose one? The universe has a purpose
means god has a purpose. It can’t very well have one without god. Only life can have a purpose for
something.

Death is What Makes Us Human

Human life without death would be something other than human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to out
deepest longings and greatest accomplishments.

~ Leon Kass(born:1939-02-12 age:77)

God Gave You a Secret and Not Me. Really?

And do you think that unto such as you
A maggot minded, starved, fanatic crew;
God gave a secret and denied it me?
Oh Well well — What matters it? Believe that too!

~ Omar Kayyám(born:1048-05-18 died:1131-12-04 at age:83)

No Other But Here

Men talk of heaven, — there is no heaven but here;
Men talk of hell, — there is no hell but here;
Men of hereafters talk and future lives, —
O love, there is no other life — but here.

~ Omar Kayyám(born:1048-05-18 died:1131-12-04 at age:83)

Sectarianism

A man is walking across a bridge, when he sees another guy about to jump off. Hey,
man he says, you don’t have to do that.Why not? the other guy says, I’ve got nothing to live for. I
lost my job, I’m bankrupt, my wife left me and took the kids, my car threw a rod and my dog just died. My
life totally sucks.But God still loves you, the man says, you believe in God,
don’t you?Well, I guess so, the guy says.
Tell me, are you a Christian?Yes the guy answers.
Well, so am I! the man says. Catholic or Protestant?I’m ProtestantWell, so am I!. Methodist, or Baptist, or PresbyterianI’m Baptist.Well, so am I. Northern or Southern Baptist?Northern Baptist.Well so am I!. Northern fundamentalist, liberal, or reformed?Northern fundamentalist.Well, so am I!. Northern fundamentalist eastern region, or Great Lakes region?Northern fundamentalist, eastern region.Well, so am I!. Northern fundamentalist, eastern region conference of 1898, or conference of 1912?Northern fundamentalist, eastern region, conference of 1912.Die, heretic! the man says and pushes him off the bridge.

~ Garrison Keillor(born:1942-08-07 age:74)

Christian Depiction of Hell

Hell is having to execute a pointless act from which nothing ever comes except the need to do it again.

~ Timothy Keller(born:1950 age:66)
Christian apologist

That sounds pretty much like the Christian conception of heaven.

Kennedy’s Dream of Religious Equality

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end — where all men and all
churches are treated as equal — where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his
choice — where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind — and where
Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain
and division which have so often marred their works in the past and promote instead the American ideal of
brotherhood.

~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy(born:1917-05-29 died:1963-11-22 at age:46)

If somebody harbours delusions, I think that should disqualify them from office, regardless
whether the delusions are religious. Letting someone who thinks the god Jehovah will bail him out serve in public
office is like letting a man who believes in Santa Claus run a Toys ’R Us.

Myths vs Lies

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the
myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort
of thought.

~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy(born:1917-05-29 died:1963-11-22 at age:46)

Triumph Of Islam

Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at he victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to
eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.

~ Ayatollah Khomeini(born:1902-09-24 died:1989-06-03 at age:86)

People who do not feel a need to avoid death are a particularly dangerous class of lunatic,
particularly if they have access to weapons of mass destruction. They are too easily tempted to use them for
trivial purposes like forcing others to pretend to agree on one particular bogus description of an imaginary
deity.

Stephen King’s Delusion

If you say, Well, OK, I don’t believe in God. There’s no evidence of
God, then you’re missing the stars in the sky and you’re missing the sunrises and sunsets and
you’re missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything
seems to work together. Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design.

~ Stephen King(born:1947-09-21 age:69)

Accepting It On Their Say-So

Faith is the acceptance of claims for which there is no good evidence; when someone invites you to take
something on faith, they are actively telling you not to challenge it, not to question it, not to inquire whether
it is really true: they are telling you to simply accept it on their say-so. And this accepting it on their say-so is at the very heart of Christianity.

Christian Openness

The gospel has become more common and open to laymen and even to women to know how to read than it customarily
is to moderately well-educated clergy of good intelligence. The pearl of the Gospel is scattered abroad and trodden
underfoot by swine.

~ Henry Knighton canon at the Abbey of St. Mary

Decrying Wyclif translating the bible from Latin to English so that people could read it for
themselves. At this time in history even most clergy could not/did not read the bible in Latin.

Cosmic Love

ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office)

I call God ECCO. It’s much more
satisfying to call it that. A lot of people accept this and they don’t know that they’re just talking
about God. I finally found a God that was big enough. As the astronomer said to the Minister, My God’s astronomical. The Minister said, How can you relate to
something so big? The astronomer said, Well, that isn’t the problem, your
God’s too small!

Lincoln on Christianity

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures
have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change
them.

~ Abraham Lincoln(born:1809-02-12 died:1865-04-15 at age:56), sixteenth
president of the United States.

Definition of Truth

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better
one.

~ Konrad Zacharias Lorenz(born:1903-11-07 died:1989-02-27 at age:85)

Discard a Hypothesis

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast.
It keeps him young.

~ Konrad Zacharias Lorenz(born:1903-11-07 died:1989-02-27 at age:85)

Personification of Evil

We had better dispense with the personification of evil because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous
kind of war: religious war.

~ Konrad Zacharias Lorenz(born:1903-11-07 died:1989-02-27 at age:85)

Fear

I am disillusioned enough to know that no man’s opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up
with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about.

~ H. P. Lovecraft(born:1890-08-20 died:1937-03-15 at age:46)

Fear

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the
unknown.

~ H. P. Lovecraft(born:1890-08-20 died:1937-03-15 at age:46)

If Religion Were True

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but
would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical
consequences.

~ H. P. Lovecraft(born:1890-08-20 died:1937-03-15 at age:46)

Strong Religious Feelings

Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical
guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.

~ H. P. Lovecraft(born:1890-08-20 died:1937-03-15 at age:46)

Excuses for Discrimination

What we need is a clear and unequivocal statement in cities and counties and states and at the federal level
that discrimination is wrong. It is wrong to matter what the excuse is, no matter what the justification is.

~ Reverend Barry W. Lynn(born:1948 age:68)

Disillusioned With Christianity

The story of genesis and the bible in general did not correlate with anything I saw in the natural world.

~ Xavier Mack(born:1996 age:20) ex Christian

Torturing Facts

When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into their service!

~ John Mackay(born:1814-03-27 died:1889-12-24 at age:75)Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds1852

Madison on Christianity

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its
fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in
both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

~ James Madison(born:1751-03-16 died:1836-06-28 at age:85)
fourth president of the United States, A Memorial and Remonstrate Against Religious Assessments1785-06-20

Madison on Effect of Christianity

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been
seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen
upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the
people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient allies.

~ James Madison(born:1751-03-16 died:1836-06-28 at age:85), fourth president of the United States, A
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, addressed to the Virginia General Assembly,
1785-06-20.

Madison on Religion

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.

~ James Madison(born:1751-03-16 died:1836-06-28 at age:85)
fourth president of the USA.

Indolent Atheists

An atheist is I think impossible, most who would be thought atheists are so out of indolence because they will
not give themselves time to reason.

~ London Magazine1774

Magellan on Trusting the Church

The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon and I have more confidence even in a
shadow than in the church.

~ Ferdinand Magellan(born:1480 died:1521-04-27 at age:40)
Some claim it was Robert Green Ingersoll (born:1833 died:1899 at age:66)

Advantages of Being the Catholic Church

What other business could get caught running a child sex ring since forever and you still keep your
customers?

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Atheism is Not A Religion

Atheism is a religion the way abstinence is a sex position.

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Consequences of Jehovah Worship

Conservatives are always going on about how Americans are always losing their values and morality. Maybe it is
because you a worship a guy who drowns babies.

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Flying Planes into Buildings

I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological
disorder.

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Jonah and Jack, Equally Nuts

If the bible myth of Jonah in the whale and the Mother Goose myth of Jack and the Beanstalk were switched at
birth so that Jack in the Beanstalk were in the bible, do you think any child would notice?

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Letting the Ignorant Lead

Do I want to make real-world policy decided on the basis on proven facts and the outer reaches of what humans
have gotten to do in science? Or do I want real world decisions made based on ancient myths, written by men who
didn’t know what a germ or an atom was, or where the sun went at night? I pick choice A.

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Liberty University

Liberty University is a school you flunk out of when you get the answers right.

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Religion Does Not Hurt Anything Except…

most wars, the crusades, the inquisition, 9/11, arranged marriages to minors, blowing up girls’ schools,
the suppression of women and homosexuals, fatwas, ethnic cleansing, honour rape, human sacrifice, burning witches,
suicide bombings, condoning slavery and the systematic fucking of children. There are a few little things I have
trouble with.

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

You Are Not a Christian

If you ignore everything Jesus told you to do, you are not a Christian; you are just auditing.

~ Bill Maher(born:1956-01-20 age:60)

Robbing God

Robbing god

~ a Christian con man

This is a term for failing to hand over 10% of one’s income to the
Christian con man who passes none of it over to God.

Church as Stockbroker

Death in Part of Life

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.

~ Thomas Mann(born:1875-06-06 died:1955-08-12 at age:80)

Definition of Satanism

What nearly everybody in my life… had misunderstood about Satanism was that it’s not about ritual
sacrifices, digging up graves and worshipping the devil. The devil doesn’t exist. Satanism is about
worshipping yourself because you’re responsible for your own good and evil.

Hidden Biblical Agenda

When I was a firm believer in Christianity, the only thing that wavered my faith was finding out how the bible
was written and why certain things were left out of it. The thing that broke through the barrier was learning that
King James, who wrote the divine right of kings was obsessed with proving monarchy
legitimacy ordained by god and instructed his team of chosen scholars to make sure his new translation strongly
included proof of this divine right. It throws the whole written by god notion out
the window and sheds light on the little man behind the curtain, trying desperately to maintain power.

~ M. Marieden

Religion and Opium

Religion is the opium of the people translated from the German Die Religion … ist
das Opium des Volkes sometimes misquoted as opiate of the people.

~ Karl Marx(born:1818-05-05 died:1883-03-14 at age:64), Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right

Religion Needs To Be Abolished

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real
happiness.

~ Karl Marx(born:1818-05-05 died:1883-03-14 at age:64)

Truth and Authority

They must find it difficult… those who have taken authority as the truth rather than the truth as
authority.

Childhood Indoctrination

Give me the child for the first seven years and I’ll give you the man.

~ Jesuit Maxim

This thinking propels Christians to try to enact mandatory Christian prayer in public schools and
other prosletysing aimed at children. Without indoctrination of children before they have developed reason to
detect how nonsensical Christianity is, Christianity would quickly die out.

Pretending for Jesus

Let’s keep that our little secret, shall we.

~ Aimee Semple McPherson(born:1890-10-09 died:1944-09-27 at age:53)

When Charlie Chaplin said that she was the best actress he had ever seen.

Purpose of Sex

The purpose of sex is procreation. Homosexuals have it just for pleasure. That is disgusting, immoral and
unnatural. Its an abomination. I will not tolerate it. Homos should go back where they came from. They have no
right to exist in this nation whose king is Jesus forever and ever amen.

~ Ima Meddler(born:1929-10-29 age:87)

A few points in rebuttal:

Nobody is asking you to have homosexual sex or even view it.

The sex other people have in private does not affect you in the least. Stop being such a busybody.

Most sex is for pleasure. Even straight couplings result in a child only on average twice in a lifetime.

People do lots of things for pleasure — music, dancing, art that do not result in procreation. You are
a Puritanical old biddy. If you enjoy being miserable, you are welcome to it, but please stop trying to export it
to others.

Males have a prostate gland perfectly positioned for sexual pleasure far surpassing that of functional sex.
We humans have obviously evolved to enjoy same gender sex. Further men and women are always complaining about the
different and baffling sexual responses of the other gender. Men and women breed successfully but are not all
that successful at mutual pleasure because they are so different.

I find your religion utterly revolting. I am sure you would too if you ever read the bible cover to cover. I
would like it if every church in the country burned to the ground. However, in Canada and the USA we have freedom
of religion. I am required not to interfere in any way with your filthy ritual cannibalism religious practices.
And in return you are not permitted to force your religious superstitions about homosexuality on me. Freedom of
religion is a truce. You chafe at not being permitted to bully others, but without it, you too would be
bullied.

Is Atheism a Religion?

If atheism is a religion, then off is a TV channel and bald is a hair colour.

~ Hemant Mehta(born:1983 age:33)

Dangerous Words

Put your trust in god are the most dangerous words in the English language.

~ Hemant Mehta(born:1983 age:33)

By that he means following this advice will inevitably cause yourself harm by failing to act or by
taking unnecessary risk.

Silly Devil

Atheists think the devil is just a silly as God is.

~ Hemant Mehta(born:1983 age:33)

An Answer for Every Problem

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Belief in the Palpably Not True

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Belief in the Palpably Not True

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation
of mankind.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Communism is a Revealed Religion

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Definition of Archbishop

Archbishop: A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Definition of Church

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get
there.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Definition of Faith

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Definition of Idealist

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make
better soup.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Definition of Morality

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong and that 99%
of them are wrong.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Definition of Puritanism

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Fifty Ways To Prepare Crabs

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Horse Laugh

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more
intelligent.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Jesus = Santa Claus

It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not
be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes
children good in precisely the same way and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence.
The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept
logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an
air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often
argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of
course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions and just
as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that
religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Legality of Birth Control

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still
forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

~ Henry Louis Mencken(born:1880-09-12 died:1956-01-29 at age:75)

Morality vs Religion

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is
right.

Miracles, Everything But True

Special Pleading

There is that special pleading again. We can believe this because it’s faith. But, we can’t believe
anything that you’ve said without a mountain of evidence, that we will still reject.

~ D. M. Murdock
biblical scholar

False Hope

False hope may provide a genuine feeling of peace, but that doesn’t make the hope any less false.

~ NDDave

Logically you would think if you knew a comforting lie was lie, it would have no ability to
comfort, yet Christians are like children, who still gain comfort from teddy bears, even though they are under no
delusions Teddy could actually come to their aid. It also a little bit like people who fantasize some movie or porn
star will come into their life. They know it would never happen, but they get pleasure pretending it could.

Religion = Breaking Heads

India is supposed to be a religious country above everything else and Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and others take
pride in their faiths and testify to their truth by breaking heads. The spectacle of what is called religion, or at
any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it
and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seems to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and
bigotry, superstition and exploitation and the preservation of vested interests. And yet I knew well that there was
something else in it, something which supplied a deep inner craving of human beings. How else could it have been
the tremendous power it has been and brought peace and comfort to innumerable tortured souls? Was that peace merely
the shelter of blind belief and absence of questioning, the calm that comes from being safe in harbour, protected
from the storms of the open sea, or was it something more?

~ Jawaharlal Nehru(born:1889-11-14 died:1964-05-27 at age:74)

Belief vs Truth

Within the deeply religious mindset, whether you believe it is more important than if it is true.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Death

When your loved ones die, nothing is going to bring them back. When you die, all that you are will be reduced to
a few dozen pounds of ape meat, going bad.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Definition of Faith

Faith in an unreasonable conviction that is assumed without reason and defended against all reason.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Definition of Fool

A fool is one who too readily accepts improbable claims from questionable sources with
insufficient evidence.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Dishonest Faith

Faith is, on every level, is the most dishonest position it is possible to have.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Everything Is Possible

Everything is possible. Monkeys might fly out of my ass? No, that is not
possible.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Everything Is Possible

If you want your life to be meaningful, try making someone else’s life meaningful.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

I Knows It In Ma Bones

If you can’t show it, you don’t know it.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron
Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Knowing

If you can’t show it, you don’t know it.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron
Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Knowledge

Science doesn’s know everything, but religion doesn’t know
anything.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

On Being Wrong

It is better to be proven wrong than to be wrong and never know it.

~ Aron Ra (née
L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Prayer in Schools

In 1963, they [the supreme court] took prayer out of
school. No, they didn’t. At no time has prayer ever been removed from schools. What they did was stop
teachers from forcing children to pray to the teachers’ particular religion.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

If you think about it, it is, with current technology, absolutely impossible to ban prayer. There
is no way to know or control another’s private thoughts.

The Problem With Christians

Christians feel oppressed when they are not allowed to oppress others.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Show Me

You want me to believe some outrageous claim? You will have to show me the truth of it and it better not require
an ounce of faith because if it requires faith, that is the admission there is no reason to believe it and having
no reason to believe it is the same as having one good reason not to believe it.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

What Do We Know?

Science doesn’t know everything. Religion doesn’t know anything.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Why Religion Requires Belief

Deceivers need believers.

~ Aron Ra (née L. Aron Nelson)(born:1962-10-15 age:54)

Truth Admits Only Approximations

Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.

~ John von Neumann(born:1903-12-28 died:1957-02-08 at age:53)

Science is about finding ever better approximations rather than pretending you have already found
ultimate truth.

God Spared Me

People survive an accident and say, God spared us. Well, what about the other
136 people who died miserably and in flames? It’s a selective use of data and is
not only not scientific, it’s really anti-scientific. It’s superstition.

The Importance of Coming Out

If people don’t know if the people they know are non religious they can’t know if they like
non-religious people.

~ Max Nielsen(born:1999 age:17)

Convictions are Worse that Lies

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche(born:1844-10-15 died:1900-08-25 at age:55)

Dangers of those Who Think Alike

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those
who think differently.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche(born:1844-10-15 died:1900-08-25 at age:55)

Definition of Faith

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche(born:1844-10-15 died:1900-08-25 at age:55)

God Could Not Be So Vain as Advertised

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche(born:1844-10-15 died:1900-08-25 at age:55)

God is Dead

God is dead and we have killed him.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche(born:1844-10-15 died:1900-08-25 at age:55)

The Importance of Why

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche(born:1844-10-15 died:1900-08-25 at age:55)

Lunatic Faith

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche(born:1844-10-15 died:1900-08-25 at age:55)

Everyone Deserves Hell

The whole point of Christianity is that everyone in the world, from Charles Manson to Mother Teresa, deserves to
go to hell.

~ Sean Ningen

Longing For A Phony God

If no god existed, would you still want to believe in one? If you answered yes to that question, by your own
admission, you don’t care if your beliefs are true or not. You just want to believe what makes you
comfortable or happy or feel superior to other people. You have no desire to get closer to the truth. You just want
to push your ideas on other people.

~ Not1Delusion

Obama’s Idiot Tolerance

We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.

~ Barack Obama(born:1961-08-04 age:55)

Obama is thinking of the video Innocence of Muslims whose whole point was to rile
Muslims to violence, but it does not take a scurrilous attack on religion to generate insane and violent responses.
Christians and Muslims all over the world have recently jailed and killed people for saying simply I don’t believe in any religion. Obama goes too far in his request for
restraint. If he wants us to avoid anyone taking offence, literally he is asking us:

Not to report priests molesting children.

Not to poke fun at the goofy claims of Scientologists and Mormons.

Not to debunk phony miracles.

Not to report the financial scams and hypocrisy of the TV evangelists.

Not to interfere with female circumcision.

Not to stop herpes-infected rabbis from killing infants with unsanitary circumcisions.

Darwin’s Proof of God

Darwin’s theory of evolution is proof of God. Anything that good must come of God. God whispered it into
Darwin’s ear. God even made a major earthquake happen in Conceptión
so that Darwin could see how the earth is in flux, an idea he borrowed for the tree of life, yet another idea he
borrowed from the bible.

~ Ann Onimus(born:1940-12-25 died:1953-12-25 at age:13)

Childish Catholics

One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.

~ George Orwell(born:1903-06-25 died:1950-01-21 at age:46)

Clear Language

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s
declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting
out ink.

~ George Orwell(born:1903-06-25 died:1950-01-21 at age:46)

Doublethink

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind
simultaneously and accepting both of them.

~ George Orwell(born:1903-06-25 died:1950-01-21 at age:46)

Christianity’s Psychic Damage of Children

But the most heinous crime of the Church has been perpetrated not against churchmen but against churchgoers.
With its poisonous concepts of sin and divine punishment, it’s warped and brainwashed countless millions. It
would be impossible to calculate the psychic damage this has inflicted on generations of children who might have
grown up into healthy, happy, productive, zestful human beings but for the burden of antisexual fear and guilt
ingrained in them by the Church. This alone is enough to condemn religion.

Fear Of Hell

The fear of hell is the basis for the Christian faith.

~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair(born:1919-04-13 died:1995-09-29 at age:76)

Letters from Christians to an Atheist

Commie, Commie, Commie!… Somebody is going to put a
bullet through your fat ass, you scum, you masculine Lesbian bitch!… You will be
killed before too long. Or maybe your pretty little baby boy. The queer-looking bastard. You are a bitch and your
son is a bastard… Slut! Slut! Slut! Bitch slut from the Devil!
That’ll give you the general idea. Oh — just one more; I love this one: May Jesus,
who you so vigorously deny, change you into a Paul.

No Evidence For Jesus

About six years ago, Life magazine ran an article on the historicity of Jesus and I was floored to find that
they conceded the only evidence we have for his existence is in the Gospels. But don’t take Life’s word
for it. In his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, the most definitive study that’s ever been done on the subject,
Albert Schweitzer admitted that there isn’t a shred of conclusive proof that Christ ever lived, let alone was
the son of God. He concludes that one must therefore accept both on faith.

But makes no sense. Why would you believe something highly improbable without evidence? Normally
you demand overwhelming evidence for preposterous claims and accept only mundane claims without evidence. That is
like saying you should accept the Easter bunny on faith, just because it is so pleasant to pretend the Easter bunny
exists.

Religion = Inactivity

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be
done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants
disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.

~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair(born:1919-04-13 died:1995-09-29 at age:76)

I am God

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

~ Peter O’Toole(born:1932-08-02 died:2013-12-14 at age:81)
playing Jack Gurney, the 14th Earl of Gurney in The Ruling Class

Author of Genesis

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the
word of God has stood and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables and
traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.

The Bible can Lie

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the
Bible does not.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

Bible Imposters

It is far better that we admitted a thousand devils to roam at large than that we permitted one such imposter
and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God and have credit
among us.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

Bible Inspires Cruelty

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

Christianity is a Parody of Sun Worship

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place
of the sun and pay him the adoration originally paid to the sun.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72)

Cruel With God

Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72)

Definition of Profesying

Prophesying is lying professionally.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

Demon Bible

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the
unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we
called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and
brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

Fatal Articles of Faith

Forgiving Sins

Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in
abundance.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

God’s Debauchery

What is it the Bible teaches us? — raping, cruelty and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us?
— to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married and the belief of this
debauchery is called faith.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

Jesus as Ghost Story

The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations
can always create in vision and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of
Julius Caesar.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72)

Moral Lying

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in
believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to
calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so
far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does
not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

Priests Are Like Conjurors

Unjust Commandments

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity
and to every idea we have of moral justice.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

Word of a Demon

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the
unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call
it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize
humankind.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

You Cannot Argue With The Irrational

To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.

~ Thomas Paine(born:1737-01-29 died:1809-06-08 at age:72).

Hidden God

God being thus hidden, any religion that does not say God is hidden is not true, and any religion that does not
explain why [God is hidden] does not instruct.

~ Blaise Pascal(born:1623-06-19 died:1662-08-19 at age:39)

God is far more than hidden; God is undetectable. We know that hidden, but detectable things like
neutrinos exist. However, unicorns are both hidden and undetectable, so there is no reason of any kind to claim
they are real. Unicorns are thus creatures of fiction, like gods. I will leave out the complication of undetectable
particles mathematically predicted to exist.

Shackles

The chains men bear they forged themselves. Strike off their chains and they will weep for their lost
security.

~ John Passmore(born:1914 died:2004 at age:90)
Australian philosopher

Golden Rule Revised

Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them do unto you, to correct for
subjective error.

Why Human Sacrifice?

Their primitive world was full of dangers, suffering and nasty surprises, including plagues, famines and wars.
It would be natural for them to ask What kind of god would create such a world? A
plausible answer was: a sadistic god, a god who liked to see people bleed and suffer.

~ James PayneSuperstitious Rationale
For Human Sacrifice

Abraham presumed Jehovah was sadistic. Why else would he have tried to placate him by sacrificing
his son?

Religion Freedom Denied

Religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion.

~ Rick Perry(born:1950-03-04 age:66)

In Perry’s view, religious freedom refers to the right of Christians to force the word of
god down the throats of unwilling non-believers by all conceivable means.

The Stars

The bible tells you no more about the stars than a child could tell you.

~ philhellenes

Adultery

If God is against adultery, why did he have a child with a married woman?

~ Philosoraptor(born:2005-06-01 age:11)

Imaginary Friends

If I have an imaginary friend, I am probably mentally ill. But if you have one with magical powers, you’re
not because?

~ Philosoraptor(born:2005-06-01 age:11)

Hates Your Sin

Christians will say God loves you but he hates your sin.. The fact is God
doesn’t exist. So the person that hates you, your so-called sin is them and they
don’t hate your sin, they hate your difference. They hate you because you are different than them and that makes them fucking assholes.

Catholicism still promotes the notion of demonic possession and updated its exorcism ritual on
1999-01-26. Christian churches still murder witches in
Africa, not to mention homosexuals, egged on by American evangelicals.

Biblical Wiki

Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from
writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God and was subjected to haphazard
editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications and non-sequiturs.

God as Copout

I think that using the word God or the attitude of faith toward that which you do’t know is a copout.
It’s a way of slapping a label on something rather than trying to understand it. Or since we may not
understand everything, just say there are some things we don’t understand. To invent stories that sound as if
they were true or could be true, to pretend that they’re true just so that we can have a story I think is
unsatisfying, and it could even be immoral because it could lead you to mistaken policies to getting in the way of
your best understanding of how the world works, to doing things that lead to more harm than good. A concrete
example would be treating a cancer with some cockamamie herbal or homeopathic formula instead of the best medicine
that we have. Or justifying invasions, and murders, and sacrifices on the grounds of appeasing some god or carrying
out some divine mandate. There’s nothing but mischief that can come from inventing stories for that which we
don’t understand. There’s nothing wrong with saying there are some things we don’t
understand.

~ Steven Pinker(born:1954-09-18 age:62)

God as Source of Morality

Going back more than 2000 years to an argument from Plato, which I believe is still a
knock-down argument today, which runs as follows: Imagine that someone said that the source of right and wrong is
divine decree. Killing is wrong because god said it is wrong. Then you have to ask, Why did
god say that it was wrong?. If it was wrong, did he have a good reason, or was it just a whim? Could he just
as easily have it is right to go out to kill and rape and torture, in which case it would be right because he said
it was right. If you recoil at that suggestion, if you say No, it would still be wrong, even
if he said it was right. Or if you say god wouldn’t have commanded us to kill and rape because he had
a reason not to give us that command, well we can appeal directly to the reason and skip the middle man.

~ Steven Pinker(born:1954-09-18 age:62)

The die-hard religionist will insist the morality was a whim. This is how he justifies all the
genocide Jehovah gets up to in the old Testament. If god does it, by definition it is righteous.

Harms Inflicted vs Harms Suffered

People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable and the harms they suffer to be
unprovoked and grievous.

Religion makes this effect even more pronounced. We are the God’s chosen
people, they are devil-worshiping insects. Even if each side thinks it is inflicting equal pain for equal pain, it
has actually ratcheted up the revenge spiral a notch. Further, the teach them a lesson
effect requires inflicting double pain in revenge, which guarantees escalation.

Human Sacrifice

Every historic civilisation has practiced human sacrifice. You take an innocent person, you subject him to
prolonged torture until he is dead. Why would so many cultures do this apparently bizarre thing that offers them no
benefit? All of the ancient civilisations believed in sadistic blood-thirsty gods. They lived their lives. They saw
it was full of nasty surprises. People died of accidents, people got sick, children got sick, crops would
fail… What kind of god would visit all of this suffering on humans? Well, the answer would obviously be a
sadistic blood-thirsty god. If God has a minimum daily requirement of human gore. Why not be pro-active about it?
Better him than me.

~ Steven Pinker(born:1954-09-18 age:62)

It could also have a been a primitive population control mechanism, though often the victims were
the healthiest and most beautiful.

Human Sacrifice Sect

After their return from Babylon, the practice of human sacrifice died out among the Jews, but survived as an
ideal in one of its break-away sects, which believed that God accepted the torture-sacrifice of an innocent man in
exchange for not visiting a worse fate on the rest of humanity. The sect is called Christianity.

Prosecuting Witchcraft

In many Muslim countries, witchcraft is not only on the books as a crime, but is commonly prosecuted. In
2009, for example, Saudi Arabia convicted a man for carrying a phone booklet with
characters in an alphabet from his native Eritrea, which the police interpreted as occult symbols. He was lashed
three hundred times and imprisoned for more than three years.

We are dealing with Muslim societies that froze themselves in amber in 900
AD. It is like going in a time machine to reason with the Spanish Inquisition. Yet there are people who
assert as self-evident that only religion can make people behave morally. Religion almost invariably makes people
behave irrationally and cruelly.

Rationalising Massacre

The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery and the exclusion of nonconformists and for
millennia those writings were used to rationalise the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of
children, dominion over animals and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals.

Soul Superstition

The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact it is highly malignant. It
discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of
their existence. Death becomes a mere rite of passage, puberty or a midlife crisis.

He’s not Dead, He’s Resting

May they rest in eternal peace.

~ Gordon Pinsent(born:1930-07-12 age:86)
at the centennial commemoration of the sinking of the Titanic.

They are dead you idiot, not resting! Pinsent reminds me of the Monty Python
Norwegian Blue parrot sketch. ‘VOOM?!?’ Mate, this bird wouldn’t
voom if you put four million volts through it! E’s bleedin’
demised!

~ Mr. Praline played by John Cleese.

Fanatical Doubt

You are never dedicated to do something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the
sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated
to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or
goals are in doubt.

Banning Gross Sex

Imagine two very very ugly people
having sex. Disgusting! But would you ever think to make it illegal for ugly people to have sex? Well of course
not. Maybe it is a case where we might be able to say You know I am grossed out by what you
are doing but that has nothing to do with whether you should be put in prison for it.

~ David A. PizarroSex Death and the Meaning of Life

Opinions vs Facts

There’s an old phrase among critical thinkers: you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your
own facts. The idea is that these are two different things: opinions are matters of taste or subjective
conclusions, while facts stand outside that, independent of what you think or how you may be biased.

You can have an opinion that Quisp cereal is, to you, the best breakfast food of all time. But you can’t
have the opinion that evolution isn’t real. That latter is not an opinion; it’s objectively wrong. You
can have the opinion that the evidence for evolution doesn’t satisfy you, or that evolution feels wrong to
you. But disbelieving evolution is not an opinion.

~ Phil Plait(born:1964-09-30 age:52)

Humour

Jocos et Dii amant — Even the gods love jokes.

~ Plato(born:428 BC died:348 BC at age:80)

Destroying the Present

Fanatics are swept up in the urge to destroy the present in pursuit of a utopia.

~ Bernard Pliers

We Are All Ignorant of the Hereafter

No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter… than you and I; and all religion… is
simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.

~ Edgar Allan Poe(born:1809-01-19 died:1849-10-07 at age:40)

Growing Atheism

23% of Canadians say that they do not believe in any god. For young Canadians under
age 25, the figure was 36%. This is by far the largest religious
minority demographic and by far the fastest growing in terms of sheer size.

~ Harris-Decima poll2008-05

The beliefs of the young become the beliefs of everyone in a few decades. Religion requires people
to avoid thinking. As soon as they have a close look at their religious beliefs, they realise not only that they
are false, but that they are preposterous. The people are gaining courage from each other on the Internet to
proclaim emperor has no clothes.

Motivating Assassins

The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men.
When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he gave them hashish [probably mixed
with belladonna] to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had
them awakened.
When these young men woke and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed
themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they;
received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will.
And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: Go and do this thing.
I do this because I want to make you return to paradise. And the assassins go and perform the deed
willingly.

~ Marco Polo(born:1254 died:1324 at age:70)

Pie In the Sky

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.

~ Alexander Pope(born:1688-05-21 died:1744-05-30 at age:56)

The old pie in the sky con.

Modified Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I must,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

~ Modified Serenity Prayer

Alternative Prayer

I give you this
One thought to keep
I am with you still
I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints on snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken
In the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars
That shine at night

Do not think of me as gone
I am with you still
In each new dawn

~ Native American prayer

On Speculation

Speculation is not knowledge.

~ Robert Price(born:1954-07-07 age:62)

Any time Christians lack evidence or the evidence contradicts their expectations, they let their
imaginations go wild to create a scenario to explain. Then they act is if they have proved that is what indeed
happened.

The Sloth Objection

How could the sloth travel after the Flood all the way from Mount Ararat in Peru, considering the extreme
tardiness of its locomotion?

Certain or Uncertain

To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.

~ Chinese proverb

Error in the Qur’an

He is the one who has set free two bodies of flowing water, one palpable and sweet and
the other salt and bitter; Yet has he made a partition between them, A partition that is forbidden to be
passed.

~ Qur’an(born:610 AD age:1406)
Surah Al Furqan 25:53

Mohammed would not have had much experience with flowing water. This is simply false. When rivers
meet, especially when one is muddier than the other, you can easily see it takes a while for them to merge. There
is no partition. Taste the water near a river mouth. It changes gradually from fresh to salty as you move from the
mouth. That is how ancient sailors knew they were getting near land.

Qur’an Gender Equality

I never fail to reward any worker among you for any work you do, be you male or female, you are equal to one
another.

~ Qur’an(born:610 AD age:1406)
Surah 3:195 Ali Imran

Allah

aligner

If He so pleased, He
Could blot you out
And bring in
A New Creation.

Nor is that (at all)
Difficult for Allah.

~ The Qur’an(born:610 AD age:1406)
: Surah Fatir (3:16-17)

Justice in the Qur’an

aligner

O ye who believe!
Stand out firmly
For Allah, as witnesses
To fair dealing and let not
The hatred of others
To you make you swerve
To wrong and depart
From justice. Be Just: that is
Next to Piety: and fear Allah.
For Allah is well-acquainted
With all that ye do.

~ The Qur’an(born:610 AD age:1406)
: Surah al-Maidah (2:8)

Vengeance in the Qur’an

If a man is slain unjustly, his heirs shall be entitled to satisfaction, but let him not carry his vengeance to
excess, or his victim is sure to be assisted and avenged.

~ The Qur’an(born:610 AD age:1406)
Al Isra 17:33

Greed is Good

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

~ Ayn Rand(born:1905-02-02 died:1982-03-06 at age:77)

Inviolate Rights

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a
minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and
the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

~ Ayn Rand(born:1905-02-02 died:1982-03-06 at age:77)

Belief is not Evidence

No amount of belief makes something a fact.

~ James Randi(born:1928-08-07 age:88)

The Believers

There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These
are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief
regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and
support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them
any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered and who will battle fiercely to preserve
their right to be victimized. The U.S. Patent Office handles an endless succession of inventors who still produce
perpetual-motion machines that don’t work, but no number of idle flywheels will convince these zealots of
their folly; dozens of these patent applications flow in every year. In ashrams all over the world, hopping
devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi will never abandon their goal of blissful levitation of their bodies by mind
power, despite bruises and sprains aplenty suffered as they bounce about on gym mats like demented (though smiling)
frogs, trying to get airborne. Absolutely nothing will discourage them.

~ James Randi(born:1928-08-07 age:88)

Deliberate Blasphemy

To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a
basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and
saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted,
medieval dinosaur and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the
Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place — not to mention the ethnic cleansing presently being performed by Christians in our world — and I condemn and
vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women. (This
comprehensive statement was arrived at by examining the statutes of those seven states that have remained in the
Dark Ages, so that I might satisfy their definitions of blasphemy.)

~ James Randi(born:1928-08-07 age:88)

Dump God

I suggest that we might want to depose this incumbent God and start dealing with The Real World. He’s
proven — time and again — to be cruel, capricious, and vindictive. He drowns, crushes, burns and
starves millions of us every day. He created cancer, viruses and germs to invade and destroy our bodies as He sees
fit and uses them very effectively. In His wisdom, He directed those in charge to impede stem cell research so that
such a powerful approach would not be available to us and He wouldn’t have to strain the Divine Intellect to
disarm that defense. We amuse Him as we flail about vainly trying to appease Him. I vote that we dump Him.

~ James Randi(born:1928-08-07 age:88)

How Conjurors Con Scientists

The conjuror or con man is a very good provider of information. He supplies lots of data, by inference or direct
statement, but it’s false data. Scientists aren’t used to that scenario. An electron or a galaxy is not
capricious, nor deceptive; but a human can be either or both.

~ James Randi(born:1928-08-07 age:88)

Magic Does Not Work

Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the
universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement
upon discovery of better evidence. What’s left is magic. And it doesn’t work.

~ James Randi(born:1928-08-07 age:88)

Catholic Church More Crooked than Enron

These guys [the Catholic church] make Enron look like altar boys.

~ Dan Rather(born:1931-10-31 age:85)

Churches Screw Victims of Priestly Predators

Catholic dioceses typically spent hundreds of thousands of dollars recklessly, then filed for bankruptcy. The
goal was to avoid the money going to the hands of victims of predator priests.

~ Dan Rather(born:1931-10-31 age:85)

Definition of Religion

It’s the old shell game.

~ Dan Rather(born:1931-10-31 age:85)

Abuse Mystery

It is a mystery why priests and other church officials abused children entrusted in their care, undermining
faith in the church in an appalling way.

Oh come now. Before he was pope, Ratzinger personally arranged coverups and transfers to fresh
pastures for pedophile priests. What other employer but the Catholic church does that for its employees?

Errors in Religion

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

~ John Rawls(born:1921-02-21 died:2002-11-24 at age:81)Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Is Atheism a Religion?

Every religion … has rituals, practices, holy writings or traditions, etc. Nothing like that has ever
developed from Atheism. There are no holy men, holidays or holy books and no agreed-upon canons of faith. In fact,
the only thing you can get some Atheists to agree upon is that there is no god.

Critical Thinking

Escaping Religion

Many of them [people who escaped religion] recounted both the terror and the relief they felt after leaving
religion behind. Terror at realizing there was no longer an imaginary friend; relief that no one was looking over
their shoulder any more. Several described the experience as similar to that of a child learning to go to sleep
without a favorite teddy bear. Others described it as simply growing up or outgrowing the need for the imaginary
friends of childhood.

Faith Crazy

Some people who experience a religious conversion seem to undergo a personality change. They can be quite
congenial and easygoing when talking about mundane things, but when they start talking about their faith, their demeanor changes. Their tone of voice modifies, their smile becomes tense and they
become defensive when questioned about their evidence for belief. It becomes difficult to have a friendly
conversation with them.

God Virus

Fundamentalism in most of its forms is the active creation of antibodies to some threatening [god] virus. As
long as threatening religions or mutations [heresies] are present, fundamentalism will churn out antibodies to keep
the population under control and prevent mutations from getting out of hand.

Religion is like a Disease

Once it (a God virus) gets in somebody’s head it doesn’t give a damn about you. All it wants to do
is get to another person. That other person can be your children, grandchildren or your next door neighbour. It
wants to go from your brain to somebody else’s brain just like Toxoplasma gondii wants
to get from one rat’s brain to a cat’s gut and then into another rat’s brain. The organism is
only using you as what we call a vector and a mosquito passes on malaria. It is just the vector for the malaria
plasmodium. So we see this. Religions are just parasites. And they act like parasites. Once you realise that
metaphor it just makes so much sense.

Religion Spreads Via Education

Education is the key to perpetuation of the [god] virus for the Taliban, Baptist or Catholic. If the virus
cannot control public education, it will seek to divert resources from public coffers to fundamentalist school
funding. From the madrassa schools of Pakistan to the Christian push for school vouchers in the United States and
the religious home school movement, religions seek to control education or to control the resources for
education.

Religious Mind Control

The lancet fluke (Dicrocoelium) infects the brain of ants by taking control and driving them to climb to the top
of a blade of grass where they can be eaten by a cow. The ingested fluke then lays eggs in the cow gut. Eventually,
the eggs exit the cow, and hungry snails eat the dung (and fluke eggs). The fluke enters the snail’s
digestive gland and gets excreted in sticky slime full of a seething mass of flukes to be drunk by ants as a source
of moisture.

In a similar way a religion takes over a person’s mind and makes him behave in life-denying
ways such as going to war, suicide bombing, celibacy or handing over his wealth to the church.

Self Delusion

Once infected, the individual [infected with a god virus] cannot detect major contradictions in his beliefs and
behavior. Belief systems become self-evident to him, and no amount of logical discourse will move him from his
belief. If a Mormon and Catholic were to debate the merits of their respective religions, neither could see his own
inconsistencies and logical fallacies, but would see the other’s quite clearly.

Symptoms of Religious Conversion

Have you ever observed somebody go through a religious conversion? The person seems perfectly reasonable to you
and has no particular concern for religion. Then a parent, friend or child dies or he gets a serious illness or is
involved in a car accident. In just a matter of weeks, he seeks out and finds the answers to all of life’s
questions and starts studying and spouting all sorts of doctrine. During such a window of
vulnerability, religion can commandeer a person’s brain.

Downside of Religion

Religion may indeed inspire acts of great kindness and courage. But it also trains people to believe things for
which there is no evidence. This makes religion’s intrusion into the political sphere all the more
troubling.

~ Ron Prescott Reagan(born:1958-05-20 age:58)

It’s on the Internet

I’m not making this up. It’s on the Internet.

~ A Republican

He was defending his claim that the budget for Obama’s trip to India was $200 million dollars a day and that 1/10 of the US Navy was
accompanying him. He is correct, of course, that you find evidence for any bizarre claim on the Internet. As Rachel
Maddow pointed out On the Internet, you can even buy canned unicorn meat.

Burned Objection

How can souls, which fly through walls like ghosts and spirits, possibly be burned in a Lake of Fire?

~ K. Richardson(born:2002 age:14)
at age 10.

One Fewer Gods

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you
dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

~ Stephen F. Roberts(born:1967 age:49)

Pretending to Love God

I can understand why people believe in God, Jacob, I just can’t understand why they are not trying to kill
the motherfucker.

~ Spider Robinson(born:1948-11-24 age:68)
character Doc Webster, about to die of a brain tumor,
Callahan’s Con.

Faithful

A man is only as faithful as his options.

~ Chris Rock(born:1965-02-07 age:51)

God Blames People for His Mistakes

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans and then
blames them for his own mistakes.

~ Gene Roddenberry(born:1921-08-19 died:1991-10-24 at age:70)

Born Atheist

It is an interesting and demonstrable fact that all children are atheists and were not religion inculcated in
their minds, they would remain so.

~ Ernestine Louise Rose(born:1810-01-12 died:1892-08-04 at age:82)

Futility of Life

Life is like stepping into a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

~ Suzuki Roshi(born:1904-05-18 died:1971-12-04 at age:67)

When Belief Evaporates…

When the whole world doesn’t believe in God, it’ll be a great place.

~ Philip Roth(born:1933-03-19 age:83)

Christianity is Training for Slavery

Christ preaches only servitude and dependence… True Christians are made to be slaves.

~ Jean Jacques Rousseau(born:1712 died:1778-07-02 at age:66)

Artificial Gloom

Nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy about something that is going to happen millions and millions of
years hence, therefore although it is, of course, a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, at least I
suppose I may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things people do with their lives I think it is
almost a consolation.

Avoiding Thinking

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some
effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think — in fact they do so.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Believing In Falsehood

Q: Do you think there’s a practical reason for having a religious belief, for many people?

Russell: Well, there can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true. That’s
quite… at least, I rule it out as impossible. Either the thing is true, or it isn’t. If it is true,
you should believe it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. And if you can’t find out whether
it’s true or whether it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. But you can’t… it seems to me
a fundamental dishonesty and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think
it’s useful, and not because you think it’s true.

Q: I was thinking of those people who find that some kind of religious code helps them to live their lives. It
gives them a very strict set of rules, the rights and the wrongs.

Russell: Yes, but those rules are generally quite mistaken. A great many of them do more harm than good. And
they would probably be able to find a rational morality that they could live by if they dropped this irrational
traditional taboo morality that comes down from savage ages.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Believing In Falsehood

There can’t be a practical reason for believing something that is not true.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Russell rejects the notion of believing a religion because it is comforting.

Believing In Falsehood

Well, there can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true. That’s quite… at
least, I rule it out as impossible. Either the thing is true, or it isn’t. If it is true, you should believe
it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. And if you can’t find out whether it’s true or whether
it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. But you can’t… it seems to me a fundamental dishonesty
and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful, and not
because you think it’s true.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

The Bible does Not Value Intelligence

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Cause of God

If everything must have a cause, then god must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may
just as well be the world as god.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Further, we have discovered that at a quantum level, events do not have causes. They just happen
for no reason. Ditto for precisely when and which atom radio-active decay occurs. We can predict averages, but not
the details. One consequence of this is the purely random ticking of a Geiger counter. You cannot predict when the
next tick will occur.

Certainty as Evil

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about
something which, in fact, was false.

Christian and Homeric Gods Are Equally Probable

There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the Christian God as there is
of the existence of the Homeric god. I cannot prove that either the Christian god or the Homeric gods do not exist,
but I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious
consideration.

Christians, Atheists and Agnostics

An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we
can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgement, saying that
there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that
the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not
worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a
careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon
and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An
Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes,
at one with the atheists.

Church Is the Enemy of Morality

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the
principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Churches Oppose Moral Progress

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in
the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races,
or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently
opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized
in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Closet Atheists

The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the
fact in public because they are afraid of losing their incomes.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Collective Fear

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as
members of the herd.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Contemplate Something Else

The wise man is as happy as circumstances permit and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful
beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

This is a profoundly wise thing to say. You are not obligated to keep thinking about the
destruction of earth, the corruption of politicians, the rising power of corporations… You will just make
yourself miserable. It is perfectly OK to think about something else.

Contemptible Christians

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the
help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes
them only because they are comforting. But he dares not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however
dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

Craving Certainty

What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Damned by Probability

Even if we could be certain that one of the world’s religions were perfectly true, given the sheer number
of conflicting faiths on offer, every believer should expect damnation purely as a matter of probability.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Definition of Obscenity

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Denying Moloch

No Carthaginian denied Moloch because to do so would have required more courage than was required to face death
in battle.

Forgo Imaginary Allies

Science can teach us and, I think, our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports,
no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below, to make this world a fit
place to live in, instead of the sort of place that churches in all these centuries have made it.

God’s Uneasy Vanity

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by
those who doubt His existence.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Homerian Atheism

None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist… I think that
all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I
think, take exactly the same line.

How Scientists Argue

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide
the issue because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since
there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert
appeal to force.

Intellectual and Moral Objections to Religion

The objections to religion are of two sorts — intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that
there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time
when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of
the age would otherwise outgrow.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Intellectual Integrity

I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of
leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all
adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to
benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs.

Justifying the Bully

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied:
The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair. In these words he epitomized
the history of the human race.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)Education and the Social Order

This is how Israelis justify mistreating Palestinians. It is all Hitler’s fault.

Lying to Children Teaches Children to Lie

There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that
their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.

Lying to children is a particularly filthy thing to do when parents inculcate religious myths as
truth into children when they are not old enough to have developed intellectual defences. I consider it a form of
child abuse.

Lying Parson

I know a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them the second coming was very imminent
indeed, but they were much consoled when they found he was planting trees in his garden.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Man, the Credulous Animal

Man is a credulous animal and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be
satisfied with bad ones.

Natural vs Man Made Disasters

The misfortunes of human beings may be divided into two classes: First, those inflicted by the non-human
environment and, second, those inflicted by other people. As mankind have progressed in knowledge and technique,
the second class has become a continually increasing percentage of the total. In old times, famine, for example,
was due to natural causes and although people did their best to combat it, large numbers of them died of
starvation. At the present moment large parts of the world are faced with the threat of famine, but although
natural causes have contributed to the situation, the principal causes are human. For six years the civilized
nations of the world devoted all their best energies to killing each other and they find it difficult suddenly to
switch over to keeping each other alive. Having destroyed harvests, dismantled agricultural machinery and
disorganized shipping, they find it no easy matter to relieve the shortage of crops in one place by means of a
superabundance in another, as would easily be done if the economic system were in normal working order. As this
illustration shows, it is now man that is man’s worst enemy. Nature, it is true, still sees to it that we are
mortal, but with the progress in medicine it will become more and more common for people to live until they have
had their fill of life. We are supposed to wish to live for ever and to look forward to the unending joys of
heaven, of which, by miracle, the monotony will never grow stale. But in fact, if you question any candid person
who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to
begin again as a new boy in another. For the future, therefore, it may be taken that
much the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through
stupidity or malevolence or both.

No Fear Of God

Are you never afraid of God’s judgement in denying him?Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I
observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in
consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be
offended by those who doubt His existence.

The Philosophy Game

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating and to end with
something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Power is the Vice of the Ascetic

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history
power has been the vice of the ascetic.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Pretending to be Safe

There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading ourselves that we are immune from disaster and the
other is by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult and to everybody becomes impossible at a certain
point. The former has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has the purpose of securing safety,
either by injuring enemies, or by protecting oneself by talismans, spells, or incantations.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Belief in a heavenly afterlife sometimes helps people cope with frightening events, but the belief
in hell is much stronger than the belief in heaven so this dodge usually backfires.

Rather Die Than Think

Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Religion is Based on Fear

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly,
as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles
and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.
Fear is the parent of cruelty and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is
because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things and
a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion,
against the churches and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this
craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us and I think our own hearts can
teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to
look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that
the churches in all these centuries have made it.

Religion is a Disease

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold
misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilisation. It helped in
early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time
they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any
others.

Religion Generates Cruelty

You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and more profound has been
the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so called
age of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the
Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burnt as witches; and there was every kind
of cruelty practised upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

Russell’s Teapot

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of
dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there
is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion
provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.
But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the
part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of
such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday and instilled into the minds
of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the
doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)Is there a God?

Savage Controversies Lack Evidence

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Truth vs Social Utility

When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only What are
the facts? and What is the truth that the facts bear out? Never let yourself be
diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were
believed. Look only and solely at what are the facts.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

War Does Not Determine Who Is Right

War does not determine who is right-only who is left.

~ Bertrand Russell(born:1872-05-18 died:1970-02-02 at age:97)

Widely Held Opinions are Often Absurd

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not entirely absurd; indeed in
view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than
sensible.

The Addiction to Belief

You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on
a deep seated need to believe.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

Bamboozlement

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we have been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any
evidence of the bamboozle. We are no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.
It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves. We have been taken. Once you give a charlatan
power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

Churches Perpetuated the Belief in Witchcraft

In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century and
inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last
bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian
churches.

The Church’s Expense Account Scam

Some are willing to forgive the church for burning witches on the grounds they did not know any
better. They did it in good faith. It turns out that is not so.

What the Malleus Malefecarum [the most popular manual on witchcraft] comes down to, pretty much, is
that if you’re accused of witchcraft, you’re a witch. Torture is an unfailing means to demonstrate the
validity of an accusation. There are no rights of the defendant. There is no opportunity to confront the accusers.
Little attention is given to the possibility that the accusations might be made for impious purposes —
jealousy, say, or revenge, or the greed of the inquisitors who routinely confiscated for their own private benefit
the property of the accused. This technical manual for torturers also includes methods of punishment tailored to
release demons from the victim’s body before the process kills her. The Malleus in hand, the
Pope’s encouragement guaranteed, inquisitors began springing up all over Europe.

It quickly became an expense account scam. All costs of investigations, trial and execution were borne by the
accused or her relatives — down to per diems for the private detectives hired to spy on her, wine for her
guards, banquets for her judges, the travel expenses of a messenger sent to fetch a more experienced torturer from
a another city and the faggots, tar and hangman’s rope. Then there was a bonus to the members of the tribunal
for each witch burned. The convicted witch’s remaining property, if any, was divided between Church and
State. As this legally and morally sanctioned mass murder and theft became institutionalised, as a vast bureaucracy
rose to serve it, attention was turned from poor hags and crones to the middle class and well — to — do
of both sexes.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

Extraordinary Claims

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

Give Me The Raw Truth

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however, satisfying
and reassuring.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

I Prefer Truth

Better the hard truth, I say, than comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the
facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

I Was Wrong

In science it often happens that scientists say, You know that’s a really good
argument; my position is mistaken, and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that
old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should because scientists are
human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that
happened in politics or religion.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

Illusion of Design

There is in this Universe much of what seems to be design.

But instead, we repeatedly discover that natural processes—collisional selection of worlds, say, or
natural selection of gene pools, or even the convection pattern in a pot of boiling water—can extract order
out of chaos, and deceive us into deducing purpose where there is none.

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We
are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save
us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth
than a reassuring fable.

If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

No Sacred Truths

[Science’s] only sacred truth is that there are no sacred truths. All assumptions must be critically
examined. Arguments from authority are worthless. Whatever is inconsistent with the facts —
no matter how fond of them we are — must be discarded or revised.

~ Carl Sagan(born:1934-11-09 died:1996-12-20 at age:62)

Rejecting a Bigger God

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, This is
better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more
elegant? Instead they say No, no, no! My god is a little god and I want him to stay
that way, A religion, old or new that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern
science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Religion is a Product of the Imagination

When Faith Appeals

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

~ George Santayana(born:1863-12-16 died:1952-09-26 at age:88)Supernaturalism

Ignoring Bible BS

The Bible. We’ll just talk about the Bible for a second. People often point out that they can’t help
it — they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying because it says right there in Leviticus; it says right
there in Timothy; it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong.

We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people. The same way, the same way we have learned to
ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation,
about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.

The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War
and justified it. The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about
owning his Christian slave. And Paul doesn’t say Christians don’t own
people. Paul talks about how Christians own people.

~ Dan Savage(born:1964-10-07 age:52)

Islamic Fundamentalism

The sun circles the earth because the sun is smaller, as is evident in the Qur’anic verses. No verse in
the Qur’an indicates that the earth is round or that it rotates. Anything that has no indication in the
Qur’an is false.

~ Fadhel al Sa’d

modern day researcher on astronomy in Iraq

Why does it sound so absurd when a Muslim says it, but is treated seriously when a Christian says
it.

Certainty Addictions

People like me and they were neurologically deformed [by Christian indoctrination]. We were trained in such a
closed environment, such a small microcosm, our families, our homeschools, even our Christian schools, then on to
Christian colleges, and so forth that there are so many people that when they question and emerge their entire
identities are at stake, their family relationships are at stake, everything they were trained to believe in. You
know back in the day, we always thought these sorts of things were psychological issues, but actually neuroscience
now tells us that we actually change the pathways in your brains whether it is alcohol addiction or what I call
certainty addiction. People get so used to having pat answers to everything, that when
they wander from that they literally feel naked and bereft.

~ Frank Schaeffer(born:1952-08-03 age:64)

Monotheism generates Intolerance, Polytheism, Tolerance

Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism; an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow
another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant, they live and let live.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer(born:1788-02-22 died:1860-09-21 at age:72)

When I was in grade 7, I questioned my history textbook that considered monotheism as more
advanced than polytheism. To me they were equally absurd.

Monotheistic Jealousy

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical
tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian
colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said,
Thou shalt make no graven image.

Imagine a human with a psychological disorder that made them assert they were the only living
being and who killed anyone else they encountered, just to keep their delusion going.

Necessity of Resignation

A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer(born:1788-02-22 died:1860-09-21 at age:72)

Religion as Animal Training

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer(born:1788-02-22 died:1860-09-21 at age:72)

Shallow Religion Comic Strips

The term that best describes me now is secular humanist. I despise those shallow
religious comics. Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most shallow. When they show him praying — I just
can’t stand that sort of thing, talking to God about some cutesy thing that he’d done during the day. I
don’t think Hank Ketcham [Dennis’ creator] has any deep knowledge of things like that. I cringe at the
mention of Family Circus, the strip by Bill Keane that is strewn with cutesy references to Jesus who wants to
protect children on school buses, but can’t because of laws about separation of church and state and those
sickly — sweet images of invisible deceased grandparents looming protectively over the kids. Oh, I
can’t stand that. You could get diabetes reading them, couldn’t you?

Religion is Like the Appendix

Religion is like our appendix, a vestigial remnant from a primitive past. Perhaps in a few millennia the god of
Abraham will invoke the same curious amusement as rain and sun gods do today. Or perhaps our god will simply be
shelved along with Zeus and Jupiter. Some day. But until then, we suffer the consequences of a population that
believes in the absence of evidence and, more curiously, rejects an objective reality that conflicts with beliefs
easily proven false.

Tradition!

Evils of Inaction

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should
have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to
triumph.

~ Haile Selassie(born:1892-07-23 died:1975-08-27 at age:83)

Uses of Religion

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful.

Stirring Up Needless Trouble

Rev. Terry Jones tried to trick Christians and Muslims into killing each other over a purely
symbolic act that harmed no one, by threatening to burn some copies of the Qur’an. Why would he do such a stupid thing?

Jones is brain damaged and did not understand the consequences of his actions.

Jones is an attention — seeking psychopath.

Right now the Christians have most of the nukes. If the fight got big enough, the Muslims could be vapourised
and the Christians would win the age old conflict.

If you read the bible cover to cover, you will discover it is absurd, erroneous and
self-contradictory. Trying to claim it is the literal word of god is like trying to pass off a poem by William
McGonagall as the work of William Shakespear. If you doubt this, use my
guide to the bible
that points out some of the more absurd passages. There is no evidence at all the bible is the literal word of god
(e.g. some titanium plates). Its authors are largely anonymous.

The only evidence the Qur’an
is the literal word of god is that the poetry is alleged to be better than any other in Arabic. It seems to me a
simpler explanation is that Mohammed was like Milton and exquisite poetry just flowed out of him without conscious
effort.

Both sides are utterly convinced, without evidence, they are speaking for God. They both know in
their hearts they have no evidence for their extravagant claims. All they have is endless repeated assertion and
threats to those who point out the lack of evidence. They both know they are lying about their certainty. But that
does not stop them killing each other.

God Cannot Be a Calm Observer

There cannot possibly be a god in heaven watching all of this calmly.

~ Revi Shankar

Yet humans can watch ant armies tear each other to bits with equanimity.

Death Ritual

I’m not going to have a tombstone. I’m going to be tossed in the air. Ashes, tossed like a
salad.

~ William Shatner(born:1931-03-22 age:85)

Happiness in Irrelevant to Truth

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is
happier than a sober one.

~ George Bernard Shaw(born:1856-07-26 died:1950-11-02 at age:94)

Interpreting the Bible

No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it
says what he means.

~ George Bernard Shaw(born:1856-07-26 died:1950-11-02 at age:94)

Prayer = Begging

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

~ George Bernard Shaw(born:1856-07-26 died:1950-11-02 at age:94)

Tarnish the Golden Rule

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

~ George Bernard Shaw(born:1856-07-26 died:1950-11-02 at age:94)

Atheist Burning

I was an infant when my mother went
To see an atheist burned. She took me there.
The dark — robed priests were met around the pile;
The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,
Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth;
The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
His death — pang rent my heart! the insensate mob
Uttered a cry of triumph and I wept.
Weep not, child! cried my mother, for that man
Has said, There is no God.

Christian Hypocrisy

And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter — house!

Design Must Be Proved

On the contrary, we have overwhelming evidence of lack of foresight, and the most bailing wire of
solutions.

Destruction of the Gods

If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley(born:1792-08-04 died:1822-07-08 at age:29)

A God Made By Man

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley(born:1792-08-04 died:1822-07-08 at age:29)

Smart People Believe Weird Things

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they have arrived at for
non-smart reasons.

~ Michael Shermer(born:1954-09-08 age:62)

Stupid Gullible Christians

In four studies on more than 800 subjects, the authors found that the higher the
intelligence and analyticity of subjects, the less likely they were to rate such statements (BS) as profound.
Conversely, and revealingly, they concluded that those most receptive to pseudo-profound BS are also more prone to
conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are
more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine. Apropos of one of this column’s
skeptical leitmotifs, detecting BS, according to the authors, is not merely a matter of
indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding
claims.

~ Michael Shermer(born:1954-09-08 age:62)

Religious Bigotry

Bigotry learned from religion is no different from bigotry learned from family, or peers or culture.

~ Steve Shives

Proving Santa Does Not Exist

I cannot prove Santa Claus does not exist. Maybe he has a secret invisible castle at the North
Pole.

~ John Shook

Divorce Rate Among Christians

In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be roughly 50
percent above the national average.

So how dare Christians assert their filthy religion is necessary for decent behaviour?

Church is Must Less Forgiving than Jesus

I read in the Gospels that Jesus forgave the men who nailed him to the cross. He even promised this day you shall be with me in paradise to a thief crucified next to him — a thief who
addressed Jesus simply as a man rather than as the son of
God. Yet, today, this same Jesus cannot forgive my kindly old aunt and allow her to dwell in paradise,
simply because her beliefs do not match Reverend So — and —
So’s?

~ Andrew Silver

Atheists Know the Bible Better than Christians

Atheism is an effect of that knowledge [a poll showed atheists knew more about religion than anyone else], not a
lack of knowledge. I gave a bible to my daughter. That is how you make atheists.

~ Dave Silverman(born:1966-08-13 age:50)
President American Atheists

Respect

Respect is earned. Religion has not earned any.

~ Dave Silverman(born:1966-08-13 age:50)
President American Atheists

Angering God

Suppose we’ve chosen the wrong god? Every time we go to church, we’re just making him madder and
madder.

~ Homer J. Simpson

Mighty Fortress of Graft

There are a score of great religions in the world, each with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly
orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of
millions of true believers each damns all the others with more or less heartiness
— and each is a mighty fortress of graft.

~ Upton Sinclair(born:1878-09-20 died:1968-11-25 at age:90)

Atheists Study Religion Too

I’ll long remember the crestfallen look of a pious student when I told him the faculty of a divinity
school he planned to attend included a large number of avowed atheists.

~ Gary SloanDid Jesus Exist and Does it Matter?

For Cosmologists God in Not Necessary

For most cosmologists, a supernatural God is an unnecessary hypothesis. For most Americans, He is an
unassailable fact. The American belief machine apparently has a fail-safe component. Nothing shuts it down.

~ Gary SloanThe Bible-Belting of America

Improbable Does Not Mean Magical

One can’t logically argue that because something highly improbable happens, some occult force
had to make it happen that way.

~ Gary SloanThe ABCs of Nontheistic Evolution

Jesus’s Pay-Offs

Their belief in Jesus gives them an indefatigably sympathetic confidant, assuages their fear of death and
bereavement, wards off existential angst, assures cosmic purpose and aligns them with the good guys. So handsome
are the psychological pay-offs of belief that many, perhaps most, devout orthodox Christians are impervious to all
countervailing logic and evidence. Their will to believe vanquishes every disquieting fact, every contrary line of
reasoning, no matter how compelling to an impartial eye. Psychologists have a frightening arsenal of terms for the
mental habits designed to preserve cherished beliefs: dissociation, absolutist thinking, dichotomisation, object
permanence, nominal realism, phenomenalistic causality and worse.

~ Gary SloanDid Jesus Exist and Does it Matter?

Science and God

Science not only hasn’t found God, it isn’t even looking for him.

~ Gary SloanThe Bible-Belting of America

Seduced by the Facts

True believers aren’t about to be seduced by the facts.

~ Gary SloanDid Jesus Exist and Does it Matter?

God is Deaf To Jews

With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.

Yes, that is true, but not in the bigoted sense Mr. Bailey intended. Deities never answer prayers
of Jews, Christians or anyone else because there are no deities to answer prayers.

Airs About Ancestors

Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it — life begins in slime and ends in
intelligence — whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist
Marshall Sahlins put the matter: We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from
apes. Everybody else take it for granted that they are descended from gods.

~ Huston Smith(born:1919-05-31 age:97)

Prejudice Is Immune to Reason

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him and cannot be reasoned out.

~ Sydney Smith(born:1771-06-03 died:1845-02-22 at age:73)

Censorship

The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his
superiority to yourself.

~ Joseph Sobran(born:1946-02-23 age:70)

Good Ends by Evil Means

Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The
evil effect on himself is certain.

~ Robert Southey(born:1774-08-12 died:1843-03-21 at age:68)

Balancing

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

~ Mr. Spock
played by Leonard Nimoy (born:1931-03-26 died:2015-02-27 at age:83) in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

Anti-gay, Pro-slavery and Anti-women

…secular journalists… tend to accept uncritically the oft — repeated Evangelical Protestant
and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti-gay. If these people were honest, they would
have to admit that the Bible is also pro-slavery and anti-women.

~ John Shelby Spong(born:1931-06-13 age:85)

Christian Justification of Slavery

Spoon fed this religion from the slave ship. They used faith to justify bringing slaves here. All the conducts
and rules in the good book. You swear by it, but failed to take a good look. You’re completely sold. Just two
centuries ago slave owners swore you didn’t even have a soul. (consciousness, the ability
to feel pain.) Now you blindly defend a faith, That was used to plunder pillage and rape a whole entire
race.

~ Greydon Square(born:1981-09-28 age:35)

The British made no bones that the purpose of sending missionaries was to soften up the natives in
North America and Africa for conquest. Any black person today who does not vomit up Christianity has a serious case
of Stockholm syndrome.

The Use of Myth

The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had
sanctioned them as a useful expedient… They needed to control the people by superstitious fears and these
cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.

~ Stabo(born:58 BC died:24 AD at age:81)
Greek geographer

Atheism Is Not A Religion

If atheism is a religion, then not playing football is a sport.

~ Dr. Stamp

Bible Is No Proof of God

Even if there is a god, the bible proves his existence just as much as the Star Wars series proves the existence
of Darth Vader.

~ Dr. Stamp

Batty as the Apostles of Old

I’m going to go all about in a Ford van. Like the apostles of old, I’ll go about the land.

Science in the Cause of Murder

Science leads you to killing people.

~ Ben Stein(born:1944-11-25 age:72)

I think even Mr. Stein would not want to live in the middle ages when the godists ran everything.
Since then science has stopped the witch trials, ended the inquisition, eliminated smallpox, invented clean water,
antibiotics, hot showers… More accurate it would be to say that Christians kill each other with weapons they
hire scientists to produce.

Advantage of Separation

Scientists have practical reasons for wishing that religion and science be kept separate. They can see nothing
but trouble … if they venture into the deeply divisive issue of religion — especially when their
results tend to support a highly unpopular, atheistic conclusion.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

A Causeless Universe

But, as we have seen, movement does not require a mover and modern quantum mechanics has shown that not all
effects require a cause. And even if they did, why would the Prime Mover need to be a supernatural anthropomorphic
deity such as the Judeo-Christian God? Why could it not just as well be the material universe itself?

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Evidence For God

If there were evidence for god, we are taking about scientific evidence, it would be in the textbooks. You would
find it in the textbooks along with the evidence for neutrinos and electrons.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Evolution, the Fact

In short, evolution is as close to being a scientific fact as is possible for any theory, given that science is
open-ended and no one can predict with certainty what may change in the future. The prospect that evolution by
natural selection, at least as a broad mechanism, will be overthrown in the future is about as likely as the
prospect of finding out some day that the Earth is really flat. Unfortunately, those who regard these scientific
facts as a threat to faith have chosen to distort and misrepresent them to the public.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Hold of Supernatural Belief

Any attempt at understanding humanity must include an explanation of the hold that supernatural belief continues
to have on most of the human race.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

I wish, therefore it is

To most theistic believers, human life can have no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely and with
understandable yearning for a meaning to their existence, they reject the possibility of no God. In their minds,
only a purposeful universe based on God is possible and science can do nothing else but support this truth.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Lack of Evidence

Proof is not required to believe [in a god]. But some sign, some evidence is needed. None exists… Find
some inkling of evidence. There is none.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

No Jehovah, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Until recent times, absence of evidence for his [Jehovah’s] existence has not been sufficient to rule him
out. However, we now have enough knowledge that we can identify many places where there should be evidence, but
there is not. The absence of that evidence allows us to rule out the existence of this God beyond a reasonable
doubt.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Park Your Brains

Is there a place in a church where you leave your brains when you enter?

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Prayer Experiments

Consider the supposed power of intercessory prayer. Well-executed experiments by reputable institutions such as
Harvard, Duke and the Mayo Clinic have failed to find that prayer improves the recovery of hospital patients.
Apologists simply say God did not choose to respond to this test. But you can bet they would have changed their
tune if the results had been positive. Trillions of prayers have been tendered over millennia. Of course, most sick
people get better anyway, except once. If the God most people worship and pray to does exist, intercessory prayer
would have a better batting average than what you would get from the normal operation of the natural world,
including luck. It doesn’t.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

If God refused to co-operate with the experiment, oddly, it would be his intention to debunk the
power of prayer. It is also important to note that the results are completely in line with informal experience.

Quantum Weirdness

Just because quantum mechanics is weird does not mean that everything that is weird is quantum mechanics.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

This is pot shot at phonies like Deepak Chopra who try to dress up their mumbo-jumbo with a bit of
quantum mechanical vocabulary or argue from stretched quantum mechanical analogies to shore up their pop
psychology.

Requirements on Evidence

Scientific evidence for God’s existence is being claimed today by theists, many of whom carry respectable
scientific or philosophical credentials. He who is neither a she nor an it supposedly answers prayers and otherwise dramatically
affects the outcome of events. If these consequences are as significant as believers say, then the effects should
be detectable in properly controlled experiments.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Science vs Religion

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Undermining Science

Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that
some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun
was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that
singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory
based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000 years
ago.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Validity of Evolution is No Longer a Scientific Question

The battle over the validity of evolution has been publicly posed as a scientific one. However, you will find
little sign of it in scientific journals, where such quarrels as exist are over details, not the basic
concept… Evolution has proved so useful as a paradigm for the origin and structure of life that it
constitutes the foundation of the sciences of biology and medicine.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

Welcoming Alternatives

Alternative explanations are always welcome in science, if they are better and explain more. Alternative
explanations that explain nothing are not welcome… Note how science changed those beliefs when new data
became available. Religions stick to the same ancient beliefs regardless of the data.

~ Victor J. Stenger(born:1935-01-29 died:2014-08-27 at age:79)

When You Die

When you die, you sit in a box and get eaten by worms. I guarantee nothing cool happens.

~ Howard Stern(born:1954-01-12 age:62)

Texas Bumper Idiocy

God said it, I believe it and that settles it.

~ Texas bumper sticker

The author of the bumper sticker does not understand the difference between the old testament
saying something and a god saying it. There is no evidence that a god had anything at all to do with the composing
of the bible. Even Christians admit it was composed by humans about whom we know almost nothing. Further, we have
no evidence that any god exists. Claiming proof because the infallible bible asserts gods exist is circular
reasoning. The bible has no authority until you can first demonstrate it was composed by a god and that it is
infallible. It clearly is not. It is cram full of
error and inconsistency.

Religion = Superstition

There is no superstition in my religion.

~ Rev. Wallace Stowe
Midsomer Murders

Actually all religions are nothing but superstition.

Censored Verses

And thus they come into Bethany and a certain, woman whose brother had died, was there. And coming she
prostrated herself before Jesus and sayeth unto him, Son of David have mercy on me. But
the disciples rebuked her.

And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was and straightway a great cry was
heard from the tomb.

And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth
was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand.

But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of
the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich.

And after six days, Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth
over nakedness. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And
thence arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.

Invisible

The invisible looks quite a bit like the non-existent.

~ Julia Sweeney(born:1959-10-10 age:57)

Christian Bullies

In response to my attempt to quietly and peacefully opt out of mandatory prayer, my family received 180 harassing and threatening phone calls, 80 angry letters (half of them
unsigned) and death threats. Employees of the school division circulated a petition against me. The headlights and
grill on our car were smashed and graffiti about communists was scrawled across the windshield. A black cross was
painted on the highway in front of our farm and scrap iron was placed in our hay fields to damage our machinery.
These are the same people who tell us they were bringing morality to the schools.

~ Chris Tait(born:1963 age:53)

Irrationality of Jealousy

The Bible says that the the Lord thy God is a jealous God. But if you are
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal and the creator of all that exists, of whom could you possibly be
jealous?

~ Charles Templeton(born:1915-10-07 died:2001-06-07 at age:85)

The answer to that question is the god Jehovah started out as a small local god. As the cult
spread the Jehovaists got bolder and asserted not only was their god better than all the other gods, the others did
not even exist.

How Churches Cover Up Lies

Faith demands that we disregard:
a) absence of expected evidence
b) presence of conflicting evidence
How do we detect lies?
a) absence of expected evidence
b) presence of conflicting evidence

~ TheraminTrees

Forgiveness

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered
… Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
… Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
… Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
… Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
… Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
… Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
… Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough;
… Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

~ Mother Theresa(born:1910-08-26 died:1997-09-05 at age:87)

Small Actions

We can do no great things; only small things with great love.

~ Mother Theresa(born:1910-08-26 died:1997-09-05 at age:87)

God Is An Asshole

Either god is the biggest asshole of all time or and most reasonably, he exists only in the minds of the
skeptically challenged.

~ TheVeganAtheist

Morality vs Religion

Morality is doing what is right no matter what we are told.

Religious dogma is doing what we are told no matter what is right

~ Andy Thompson

Assuming Agency

An individual watching another chip away at a flint would attribute to him a purpose, similar to his own when he
created a tool. So too would he assume that lightning, rain, the sun, the stars, the moon must have had some sort
of purposeful creative force behind them. Here lie the very deepest roots of our religious beliefs.

Mass Ignorance in America

According to a recent Gallup poll, 66% of the US population agrees strongly with the
statement God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the
last 10,000 years. Given the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to the
contrary, such obstinate belief should frighten any reasonable thinking person.

Religion is Like Junk Food

If you understand the psychology of junk food, you understand the psychology of religion.

~ Dr. J. Anderson Thomson, Jr.

What he means is sugar is an artificial way to super-satisfy the natural desire for fresh fruit.
We are not evolved to deal appropriately with such a strong stimulant. In a similar way, religion creates an
artificial way to super-satisfy the desire for attachment, by offering up a super-parent.

Misuse of the Word God

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so
sparingly. By misuse I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness
behind that word, use it with great conviction as if they knew what they were talking about. Or, they argue against
it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying.

The Problem is Believing in a Supreme Being

Show Me My Errors

If you challenge my ideas and present to me my errors, then, upon the honour of my character, constructively I
shall build.

~ Fidem Turbare
the non-existent atheist goddess, 2012-01-22

Unattainable Perfection

Beauty is only one of many survival traits. This is why a quest for perfection can never genuinely be sought
through to completion.

~ Fidem Turbare
the non-existent atheist goddess, 2012-01-04

Prayer = Demanding Miracles

Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this — Great God, grant
that twice two be not four.

~ Ivan Turgenev(born:1818-11-09 died:1883-09-03 at age:64)

Refuting Copernicus

In the time of Galileo Galilei it was argued that the texts, And the sun stood
still… and hasted not to go down about a whole dayJoshua 10:13
and He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any timePsalms 104:5
were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.

~ Alan Turing(born:1912-06-23 died:1954-06-07 at age:41)

And God Created the Fly

If we could imagine such a man, that is a man who could invent the fly and send him out on his mission
and furnish him with his orders: Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth and,
diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child, settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw
and pester and sting, worry and fret and madden the worn and tried mother who watches by the child and humbly prays
for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

We would endlessly revile a man who invented the fly, but we let God off the hook for allegedly
doing the exact same thing. Why don’t people tell this bastard, God, what they really think of him? Because
they are afraid of the imaginary monster they have created.

Bible as Biography

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness… It is perhaps the
most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light … by contrast.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Biblical Lies

[The Bible] has noble poetry in it… and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity and upwards of a
thousand lies.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Boring Heaven

Most people can’t bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere
very similar to it for eternity?

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Chloroform in Print

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the elect have seen it, or,
at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is
such a pretentious affair and yet so slow, so sleepy; such an insipid mess of
inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping
awake while he did it was, at any rate.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Christian Attachment to Slavery

There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No
place in all the land but one — the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn
fight and then did what it always does, joined the procession — at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery
texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Clueless Jehovah

When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn’t know.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Definition of Faith

Faith is believing what you know isn’t so.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Definition of Religion

Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Ease Of Dismissing Another Man’s Religion

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is
also.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Evaluating the Bible

It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and
some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Fooling

It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

God = Malign Thug

If there is a God, he is a malign thug.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

God Of The Bible

To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master;
to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact and changeless
ordering of the machinery of His colossal universe is proof that He is at least steadfast to His purposes; whose
unwritten laws, so far as the affect man, being equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things,
taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will be steadfast, just and fair toward
us. We shall not need to require anything more.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Heaven ≠ Rest

Heaven is the very last place to come to rest and don’t you be afraid to bet on that!

Humour and Religion are Incompatible

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — unless he
purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

I am Superior To Jehovah

I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Deity. The one that I want to
keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never
respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times — in fact I amount to
that myself.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

In God We Trust

In God We Trust. I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were
true.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Moral Law

It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that
wherever we see suffering and sorrow, which we can relieve and do not, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a
case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin then?

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

No Fear of Death

I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was
born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Noah and the Dinosaur

As for the dinosaur — But Noah’s
conscience was easy; it was not named in his cargo list and he and the boys were not aware that there was such a
creature. He said he could not blame himself for not knowing about the dinosaur because it was an American animal
and America had not then been discovered.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Obdurate Bible

More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them
remain.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Oddly, the one death penalty modern day Christians cling to with vigilante violence is one cherry
picked from the scores that Leviticus demanded, the one against homosexuality.

Passages Understood and Not Understood

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me
are those I do understand.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Power of Laughter

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Praying for Rain

It is better to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Praying For Satan

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that
needed it most?

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Proof of Immortality

One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it. They also believed the world
was flat.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

A Quaint Idea

Man is a marvelous curiosity… he thinks he is the Creator’s pet… he even believes the
Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of
trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Refusal to Correct

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice
changes… The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at
the tail of the procession — and take the credit of the correction. During many ages there were witches. The
Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live.

Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set
about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured,
hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul
blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to
laugh or to cry… There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is
gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties
are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Ridicule Kills Religion

No god and no religion can survive ridicule. No church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face
ridicule in a fair field and live.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Source of Beliefs

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand
and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken
them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Spitting on the Holy

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things
and yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy
for us.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Subsidising Churches

No church property is taxed, and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make
up the deficit in the public income thus caused.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

The modern Christian rejoices in this state of affairs. He has stolen from the hated heathen, and
gotten away with it.

Understandable Parts of the Bible

It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do
understand.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

What You Know

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just
ain’t so.

~ Mark Twain(born:1835-11-30 died:1910-04-21 at age:74)

Facts Are True

Facts are true whether or not you believe them.

~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson(born:1958-10-05 age:58)

Identified UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) Are No Longer UFOs

UFO (Unidentified Flying Object)sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general
public. In fact, they’re lower. You say, why is that so? Well because we know what the hell we’re
looking at!

~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson(born:1958-10-05 age:58)

Newton Changed the World

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton
(born:1642-12-25 died:1727-03-31 at age:84).

~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson(born:1958-10-05 age:58)

Even though the church admits it moved Jesus’s birthday, Christian were outraged. In their
view Jesus owns December 25 and any one else with that birthday should not be mentioned.

No Benevolent Force

The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there’s any sort of benevolent force
that has anything to do with it, at all.

~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson(born:1958-10-05 age:58)

We Are Part of the Universe

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable
to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the
galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other
biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That
makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the
universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.

~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson(born:1958-10-05 age:58)

Earth Power

We gently caress you, the Earth, our planet and our home.
Our vision has brought us closer to you, making us aware of the harm we have done to the life-network upon which we
ourselves depend.
We are reminded that we have poisoned your waters, your lands, your air.
We have filled you with the bones of our dead from war and greed.
Your pain is our pain.
Touching you gently, we pray that we may become peace-bringers and life-bringers so that our home in its journey
around the Sun not become a sterile and lonely place.
May this prayer and its power last forever.

Forget for a second you are a cowering, ass-kissing weasel and man up and give an objective
answer. Admit it. Not even Hitler came close to this bastard for evil.

Non-Christian View

We are like the spider.
We weave our life and then move along in it.
We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.
This is true for the entire universe.

~ The Upanishads

totaliter aliter

Whenever religion touches science, it gets burned. In the sixteen century astronomy, in the seventeenth
microbiology, in the eighteenth geology and paleontology, in the nineteenth Darwin’s biology all grotesquely
extended the world-frame and sent churchmen scurrying for cover in ever smaller, more shadowy nooks, little gloomy
ambiguous caves in the psyche where even now neurology is cruelly harrying them, gouging them out from the
multifolded brain like wood lice from under the woodpile. Barth had been right: totaliter
aliter (completely different)
Only by placing God totally on the other side of the humanly understandable can any final safety for Him be
secured.

~ John Updike(born:1932-03-18 died:2009-01-27 at age:76)

Beliefs Divide

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

~ Peter Ustinov(born:1921-04-16 died:2004-03-28 at age:82)

Optimism is Denial of Reality

One of the theories about major depression is that depressed people are the true realists — if you really
want to know the facts, talk to them. The rest of us, fortunately, are in a state of denial and optimism. What is
optimism? Denial of reality. What is extreme optimism? Extreme denial of reality.

Reality Denial

We know what we are supposed to do in terms of exercise and diet, yet most of us ignore it; we have this magical
way of thinking, of denying the reality we face. Look at our national debt: we just ignore it and somehow imagine
it’s going to go away. Our failure to do anything about climate change is the ultimate form of denial —
now, of course, that reality is staring us in the face.

Born Again Atheist

I’m a born-again atheist.

~ Gore Vidal(born:1925-10-03 died:2012-07-30 at age:86)

Conquests Excused by Religion

When the white race broke out of Europe 500 years ago, it did many astounding things
all over the globe. Inspired by a raging sky-god, the whites were able to pretend that their conquests were in
order to bring the One God to everyone, particularly those with older and subtler religions.

~ Gore Vidal(born:1925-10-03 died:2012-07-30 at age:86)

Evil of Monotheism

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric bronze-age text known
as the Old Testament, three antihuman religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are
sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal-God is the omnipotent father — hence the loathing of
women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male
delegates. The sky-god is jealous. He requires total obedience. Those who would reject him must be converted or
killed. Totalitarianism is the only politics that can true serve the sky-god’s purpose. Any movement of a
liberal nature endangers his authority. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader
in the family.

~ Gore Vidal(born:1925-10-03 died:2012-07-30 at age:86)

Feeble Explanations

Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of
the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.

~ Gore Vidal(born:1925-10-03 died:2012-07-30 at age:86)

Monotheism is the Greatest Disaster

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism,
Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent
god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and
educational system.

As religious myths go, polytheism has one huge advantage. As an polytheist, my default position is
that your gods exist too. I don’t have to deny their existence or declare them wicked or kill you for
worshiping them. It is just that I like mine better, or that mine specialise in requests from my locality or in my
sort of needs.

Why Puritans Left England

The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn’t be Puritans in their mother country, but
because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and
did.

~ Gore Vidal(born:1925-10-03 died:2012-07-30 at age:86)

NDEs (Near Death Experiences) Show Hell Is Transitory

Almost no one who has ever studied the NDE (Near Death Experience)
comes away thinking that Hell is eternal.

~ Dr. Ken Vincent

Nature Does Not Break the Laws of Nature

Nature never breaks her own laws.

~ Leonardo da Vinci(born:1452-04-15 died:1519-05-02 at age:67)

Greeks and the Problem of Evil

The ancient Greeks did not have to wrestle with the philosophical problem of the existence of evil. They did not
claim their gods were good, just magnificent.

~ Margaret Visser(born:1940-05-11 age:76)

Answered Prayer

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies
ridiculous. And God granted it.

Scoundrel + Fool = Religion

Conquering the Universe

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer
the Universe.

~ Kurt Vonnegut(born:1922-11-11 died:2007-04-11 at age:84)

Dead is Dead

When you’re dead you’re dead.

~ Kurt Vonnegut(born:1922-11-11 died:2007-04-11 at age:84)

Fart Around

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.

~ Kurt Vonnegut(born:1922-11-11 died:2007-04-11 at age:84)

Telekinetics

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand

~ Kurt Vonnegut(born:1922-11-11 died:2007-04-11 at age:84)

Unquestioning Faith is Terrifying

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and
absolutely vile!

~ Kurt Vonnegut(born:1922-11-11 died:2007-04-11 at age:84)

Bodhisattva Vow

The deluding passions are inexhaustible.
I vow to extinguish them all.
Sentient beings are numberless.
I vow to save them all.
The truth is impossible to expound.
I vow to expound it.
The way of the Buddha is unattainable.
I vow to attain it.

~ vow of the Bodhisattvas

Choosing a Religion

Did you actually choose among the religions, compare and examine the evidence for them or did your religion
choose you [when you were too young to resist]?

~ VoysovReason

Morality Predates Religion

We had morality long before the current religions came along.

~ Frans de Waal(born:1948-10-29 age:68)
primatologist

So morality must come from man, not from gods or religion.

On Ken Ham

We were worried about Bill Nye going up against a professional fraud like Ken Ham.

~ James Kirk Wall

Abortion is Never Therapeutic

With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance in which an abortion would be needed to
save a woman’s life. There is no such exception as life of the mother and as far as health of the mother,
same thing.

Joe has no medical training. How would he know this finding that apparently no doctors are aware
of?

Allah’s Vanity

He [Allah] should demand praise and absolute worship from creatures He Himself has created? What can we say of
the rather curious psychology of a Being who creates humans — or rather automata — some of whom are
preprogrammed to grovel in the dirt five times a day in homage to Himself? This obsessive desire for praise is
hardly a moral virtue and is certainly not worthy of a morally supreme Being.

~ Ibn Warraq(born:1946 age:70)

George Washington On Religion

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in
religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the
enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of
every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to
endanger the peace of society.

~ George Washington(born:1732-02-22 died:1799-12-14 at age:67), first president of the United States, letter to Edward
Newenham, 1792-10-20

Conceited Apes

I have an understanding of who and what I am, which is a part of the earth. So that’s what I identify
with, is the planet as a whole.

We come out of the earth and go back into the earth. What gives me great joy is knowing that everything around;
rivers, mountains… is a part of my body.

Almost all theological thought is anthropocentric and I just cannot buy into the anthropocentric ideology.
Basically we’re a bunch of conceited apes.

~ Captain Paul Watson(born:1950-12-02 age:66)
environmentalist

Comprehensible Pointless Universe

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

~ Steven Weinberg(born:1933-05-03 age:83)

Defeating Logic

All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically.

Disliking God

Maybe at the very bottom of it… I really don’t like God. You know, it’s silly to say I
don’t like God because I don’t believe in God, but in the same sense that I don’t like Iago, or
the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and
Islam seems to me a terrible character. He’s a god who will… who obsessed the degree to which people
worship him and anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don’t worship him in the right way.
Now I realise that many people don’t believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or
Christians, but that is the traditional God and he’s a terrible character. I don’t like him.

~ Steven Weinberg(born:1933-05-03 age:83)

Evil in the Name of God

Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that
Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the
way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity
is a terrible thing.

Good People Doing Evil

Religion in an insult to human dignity. With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

I Don’t Like God

Maybe at the very bottom of it… I really don’t like God. You know, it’s silly to say I
don’t like God because I don’t believe in God, but in the same sense that I don’t like Iago, or
the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and
Islam seems to me a terrible character. He’s a god who will… who obsessed the degree to which people
worship him and anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don’t worship him in the right way.
Now I realise that many people don’t believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or
Christians, but that is the traditional God and he’s a terrible character. I don’t like him.

Possibility of No Religion

One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be
religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this
accomplishment.

~ Steven Weinberg(born:1933-05-03 age:83)

Purpose of Religion

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if
you want to make good people do wicked things no need religion.

Religion = Insult

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

~ Steven Weinberg(born:1933-05-03 age:83)

Religions Makes Good People Do Evil

Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a
religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain
described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the
legitimacy of slavery because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing
slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God’s will. With or without religion, good
people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.

Religions Makes Good People Do Evil

It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course
it’s still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function,
that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and
so on and it’s not really that fundamental.

In other words, the values comes out in the wash. It was not arbitrarily selected by some
deity.

Christian Tidal Wave

Indeed Christianity passes. Passes — it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches,
cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells
and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a
multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm
nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases.
Sentiments. Habits.

The Greatest Evil

I do not believe I have any immortality. The greatest evil in the world today is the Christian religion

~ H. G. Wells(born:1866-09-21 died:1946-08-13 at age:79)

Immense Vacancy

Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

~ H. G. Wells(born:1866-09-21 died:1946-08-13 at age:79)

Moral Indignation

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

~ H. G. Wells(born:1866-09-21 died:1946-08-13 at age:79)

Sectarianism

A priest is a man vowed, trained and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps and necessarily with an
intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent
thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his
particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant
preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will
convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce.

The Silly Story

I was indeed a prodigy of Early Impiety… There was a time when I believed in the story and the scheme of
salvation, so far as I could understand it, just as there was a time when I believed there was a Devil…
Suddenly the broke through to me and I knew this God was a lie… I sensed it was a silly story long before I
dared to admit even to myself that it was a silly story. For indeed it is a silly story and each generation
nowadays swallows it with greater difficulty… Why do people go on pretending about this Christianity?

Ubiquitous Superstition

All men, however, highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.

~ H. G. Wells(born:1866-09-21 died:1946-08-13 at age:79)

Jehovah the Merciful

Did you know, for example, that God:

Forced friends and family to kill each other for dancing naked around Aaron’s golden calf?

Burned Aaron’s sons to death for offering him strange fire?

Burned complainers to death, forced the survivors to eat quail until it literally came out their noses, sent
fiery serpents to bite people for complaining about the lack of food and water and
killed 14,700 for complaining about his killings?

Buried alive those that opposed Moses (along with their families)?

Burned 250 men to death for burning incense?

Rewarded Phinehas for throwing a spear though the bellies of an inter-tribal couple while they were having
sex?

Ordered, assisted in, or approved of dozens of complete genocides?

Accepted human sacrifice in the cases of Jephthah’s daughter and Saul’s seven sons?

Helped Samson murder thirty men for their clothes, slaughter 1000 with the jawbone
of an ass and kill 3000 civilians in a suicide terrorist attack?

Smote the Philistines of several cities with hemorrhoids in their secret parts?

Killed a man for trying to keep the ark of the covenant from falling and 50,070 for
looking into the ark?

Approved when David bought his first wife with 200 Philistine foreskins?

Killed King Saul for not killing every Amalekite as he told him to do?

Slowly killed a baby to punish King David for committing adultery?

Killed 70,000 because David had a census that he (or Satan) told him to do?

Sent a lion to kill a prophet for believing another prophet’s lie, another lion to kill a man for not
smiting a prophet and some more lions to kill people that didn’t fear him enough?

Killed 450 religious leaders who lost a prayer contest with Elijah and burned
102 men to death for asking Elijah to come down from his hill?

Sent two bears to rip apart 42 boys for making fun of Elisha’s bald
head?

Killed 27,000 Syrians by having a wall fall on them, sent an angel to kill
185,000 sleeping soldiers, interfered in human battles to kill a half million Israelite
and a million Ethiopian soldiers?

Killed King Ahab for not killing a captured king and then sent King Jehu on a series of mass murders to kill
all of Ahab’s family and friends who had ever pissed against a wall?

Killed Jehoram by making his bowels fall out?

Killed Job’s ten children in a bet with Satan?

Killed Ezekiel’s wife and told him not to mourn her?

Killed Ananias and Sapphira for not giving Peter all their money?

Killed King Herod by feeding him to worms?

All of these killings and more, are found in the Bible and the God of the Bible is proud of each one.

Prayer does have an effect except wasting time and procrastinating doing something that would be
effective.

Why There is Something

The answer to the ancient question Why is there something rather than nothing would
be that nothing is unstable.

~ Frank Wilczek(born:1951-05-15 age:65)
Nobel laureate physicist

Informally, something is more natural than nothing. The question presumes that
nothing is easy and something is hard. It is the other way around. By analogy, it takes work to
create a vacuum.

Friendless Heaven

I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.

~ Oscar Wilde(born:1854-10-16 died:1900-11-30 at age:46)

Impossible vs Improbable

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

~ Oscar Wilde(born:1854-10-16 died:1900-11-30 at age:46)

The Vatican Bank

Despite its claims otherwise, the Vatican Bank is not a branch of the State of Vatican City. (Stato della Citta del Vaticano). It exists as an entity unto itself without corporate or
ecclesiastical ties to any other agency within the Holy See. It is under the direct supervision of the pope. He is
the one and only stockholder. He owns it; he controls it.

Head in the Sand

It is typical of Christians to ignore bad news when it comes from science instead of from
crackpots. If a major event was not prophesied in the bible, it is nothing to worry about. The way Christians look
at it, if it will cause global havoc, either god will be its agent, or god will rescue us from it. In either case,
there is nothing we need to do. That sort of thinking might lead a Christian in a sinking lifeboat to refuse to
bail. This can lead fellow passengers to fantasise about throwing them overboard. Christianity is the major excuse
for sloth.

No Evidence

There is zero evidence for god.

~ Lewis Wolpert(born:1929-10-19 age:87)

Science

I would teach the world that science is the best way to understand the world and that for any set of
observations, there is only one correct explanation. Also, science is value-free, as it explains the world as it
is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology — from medicine to industry.

~ Lewis Wolpert(born:1929-10-19 age:87)

Christian Homophobia

Homosexuality is far worse than slavery.

~ A Christian Woman

This makes no sense. Slavery destroys the slave’s life. Homosexuality has no effect on
anyone else’s life.

I Am Nothing Without God

I am nothing without god.

~ Anonymous young woman

What does this young woman mean? I think she means she is incapable of making a decision without
first consulting the bible. What she is effectively saying is I am nothing without sewer
water. The bible is perhaps better than no guide at all, but it is not nearly as good as everyday
non-religious morality, common sense right and wrong, which has kept up to date. She is using a moral guide,
incomplete, barbaric and 3000 years out of date. If she followed it literally, she would
be jailed in any country on earth.

Exemplary Response

Shove it up your ass.

~ South Carolina woman
on her deathbed to Christians trying to convert her.

Proof of No God

There is no proof that God, does not exist. If you can prove that God does not exist, please post your proof and
I will read through it or watch it and if it is valid evidence I will take it as truth.

~ Wondergoat

Why do you need mathematical proof rather than simply overwhelming evidence, especially when you
have not a stick of evidence to support your god hypothesis? Surely the weight of evidence should prevail, as in a
court room. Just as easily I could demand you prove that god exists. That would be equally unreasonable.

Then I take you think it impossible to prove to (in the sense of convince) a child that there are
no monsters under the bed. I take it seeing no monster, seeing no evidence of monster activity, pointing out the
complete lack of monster attacks on TV and in the newspapers is not sufficient. That alone such be sufficient to
dispel fear of monsters or gods.

Properly speaking, proof is a term from the realm of mathematics. You don’t prove cows have
four legs, you offer evidence they do. You can’t prove the sun will rise tomorrow either, though you can give
ample evidence historical, astronomical and gravitational why it almost certainly will.

Your argument reminds me a bit of a child who says, I refuse to eat my peas
until you prove they are good for me. It is just a way of discarding the parent’s rational arguments
for eating the hated peas.

Geometry and algebra are about the only places in life where it makes sense to demand a proof.
Only in that realm is truth so certain.

You set the bar preposterously high, higher than the level of certainty the sun will rise tomorrow
because you are dishonest. You are just looking for an excuse to ignore the overwhelming evidence that you are
peddling an idiotic notion for which there is no evidence and a filthy con.

God and Job

I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.

~ Virginia Woolf(born:1882-01-25 died:1941-03-28 at age:59)

Killing a Phantom

It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.

~ Virginia Woolf(born:1882-01-25 died:1941-03-28 at age:59)

Gullibility

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

~ Malcolm X(born:1925-05-19 died:1965-02-21 at age:39)

The Black Hole of Christian Hell

One of the things that most pains and torments these Japanese is that we teach them that the prison of hell is
irrevocably shut. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives; and
they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope… and I am obliged to answer
that there is absolutely none. The grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully; they almost pine away with
sorrow… I can hardly restrain my tears sometimes at seeing many so dear to my heart suffer such intense pain
about a thing which is already done with and can never be undone.

Gods in the Image of Man

If oxen and lions had hands and could paint with their hands and produce works of art, as men do, horses would
paint the forms of the gods likes horses and oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to the
bodies of each. So the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians give theirs red hair and blue
eyes.

~ Xenophanes of Kolophon(born:570 BC died:480 BC at age:90)

The ancient Jews created for themselves a highly obnoxious god, Jehovah. Xenophanes’
observation implies they must have been a highly obnoxious people.

Brother XII’s Secret

Find people who want to give away their money, and take it from them.

~ Brother XII(born:1878-07-25 died:1934-11-07 at age:56)

Necessity of Eradicating Christianity

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last
priest.

~ Émile Zola(born:1840-04-02 died:1902-09-29 at age:62)

Unethical Christians

A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists and non-religious people in general, are far
from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues
such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia,
anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their
religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.